Facebook's privacy push with Messenger, Instagram: What is end-to-end encryption?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes secure private messaging services will gain popularity over open platforms in the future. Zuckerberg aims to reduce permanence and secure data by developing the social media network into one focused around privacy. Zuckerberg said, "I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services."

Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion back in 2014, made it clear that the company believed private messaging is the future. Zuckerberg mentioned in a lengthy post, “I expect future versions of Messenger and WhatsApp to become the main ways people communicate on the Facebook network.”

In his post, Zuckerberg wrote, “On balance, I believe working towards implementing end-to-end encryption for all private communications is the right thing to do.”

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a secure method of communication that prevents third parties from accessing data from a private conversation.

In other words, end-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you're communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody, including the messaging platform being used can modify the contents of the message.

Messages on email and chat networks pass through intermediaries and are stored by third-party service providers before the intended recipient retrieves them. In several cases, the stored messages aren’t encrypted or are only encrypted during transit and not while they are stored. While this system allows third parties to scan illegal content, it can also be misused by anyone with access to the stored messages. End-to-end encryption prevents data from being read or secretly modified by anyone other than the original sender and recipient.

End-to-end encryption prevent third party sources to hack into your messages or data and misuse it.

"Before a message ever leaves your device, it's secured with a cryptographic lock, and only the recipient has the keys. In addition, the keys change with every single message that's sent. While all of this happens behind the scenes, you can confirm your conversations are protected by checking the security verification code on your device," according to WhatsApp

WhatsApp uses the end-to-end encryption system to offer users a secure method of communication, where not even WhatsApp has access to messages, photos, videos, voice messages, documents, status updates and calls. Furthermore, this feature is continuously active and cannot be disabled. This protects user data from being accessed or misused by third-party application service providers, hackers and Internet service providers.

According to Zuckerberg, bringing WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption to Messenger and Instagram will be a step in the right direction after the Cambridge Analytica scandal that took place last year. He also went on to state that Facebook would avoid building data centres in countries that blatantly violate privacy or freedom of expression.