How to use Facebook’s Secret Conversations service in Messenger?

Facebook has rolled out opt-in encryption of chat to its 900 million users. In last spring Whatsapp rolled out end-to-end encryption for chat only to be followed by its parent company Facebook. The new opt-in feature would allow 900 million users of Facebook Messenger to be able to choose to have special chat threads that would be end-to-end encrypted. These chat threads will be thus visible to only the sender and the recipient and no one else. This feature has been named as Secret Conversations. Interestingly this feature also allows you to mark the conversations for self-destruct anywhere within 5 seconds to one day.

For starting the Secret Conversation Go to Home Page, Tap for a New Message and then Tap the Secret Button located at the top right corner of the page and then select the contact with whom you want to have the secret conversation. The moment you start Secret Conversation, Facebook App displays a message saying “your conversation has been encrypted to the other”.

Facebook has published a support feature that explains the working of this new privacy feature. It had done the same thing after encrypting Whatsapp chats. The new feature Secret Conversations is using the Signal Protocol for encryption which is similar to what is being done in Whatsapp encryption. This protocol has been developed by Open Whisper Systems. Google has also used Signal for the Incognito mode in its new Allo chat app. The Secret Conversations feature however does not support group messages, gifs, videos, voice and video calling or payments.