Facebook is testing audio, video calls over Messenger in Secret Mode

Encrypted calls over Facebook Messenger could be in works. According to app researcher and tipster Jane Manchun Wong, social media giant Facebook is testing audio and video calls over Messenger in Secret Mode. Messenger app currently allows 'secure' conversations in its Secret Mode where messages exchanged between sender and receiver take place over an end-to-end protocol. Now, Facebook Messenger appears to be extending the same encrypted conversation functionality to audio and video calls.

Amongst Facebook's suite of messaging apps, only WhatsApp allows end-to-end encrypted messaged and audio/video calls. Unlike Messenger, the WhatsApp app allows encrypted calls and messaging by default. However, in Messenger, encrypted conversations in Secret Mode are separate, unlike in standard mode, which is not encrypted. It seems like the feature is currently in a testing phase. So it remains to be seen when it hits the public version of the Messenger app.

Facebook privacy vision

In his so-called privacy vision, Zuckerberg earlier promised to greatly increase the security of these messages. It will implement so-called end-to-end encryption for messaging, which would scramble them so that no one but the sender and recipients could read them. That would bar access by governments and Facebook. WhatsApp is already encrypted this way, but Messenger and Instagram Direct are not.

Encrypted messaging is in many ways a big plus for privacy. But the way Facebook collects information about you on its main service site isn’t changing, said Jen King, director of consumer privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.

Facebook is likely to collect data about your messaging — so-called metadata that, according to security experts, will let it know who you communicate with, when and how often you text them, where you are when you do it and for how long. That can tell Facebook a lot about you even if it can’t read the contents of your messages.

READ | Here's what Mark Zuckerberg's ‘privacy vision’ for Facebook really means

READ | Instagram will soon tell you who do you interact with the most

(With agency inputs)