Facebook Messenger has been rolling out several updates in the recent past, however, most of them have been directed towards business-oriented minds.
This seems to be headed for a break as the company is reportedly working on a new feature that will for sure appeal to those who value their online privacy. Speaking of privacy, another Facebook-owned app, WhatsApp, has been very busy in recent times with rolling out security updates. The more than 1 billion people that actively use the app on a monthly basis can now be guaranteed of secure communications thanks to the addition of end-to-end encryption. With this kind of protection, users of the app can be sure that not even WhatsApp employers can access conversations between individuals or groups.
Facebook Messenger is headed in the same direction, but with a different approach. The Twitter account by the name @iOSAppChanges has posted some interesting screenshots of Facebook Messenger for iOS. According to the screenshots, users of this app on iPhones will soon start sending Snapchat or Telegram-like messages to their friends. This is the feature that has made both Snapchat and Telegram very popular apps and just recently, Viber also brought the feature on board.
In the new app, users will not just be able to send disappearing messages, but they will also be able to dictate the amount of time they want their messages to last in the recipient’s inbox.
Facebook Messenger v68.0
As mentioned, the Facebook Messenger version that has reportedly been spotted with the disappearing messages feature is for iOS users. This is v68.0 of the chat app, but it is not yet available for downloading from the official iTunes App Store.
There is probably more that is coming with this new version of Facebook Messenger. According to an earlier report, the previous version of the app, v67.0, had the ability to hold secret chats, but this was hidden. This follows another report that came out in March with details of a Facebook Messenger code that included “secret conversations” references. Despite all these, none of these features is available on the stable version of the app on both iOS and Android platforms.
Facebook has not yet made any comments regarding this looming update, but there is no doubt it will make Messenger an even more secure app to use. The app already has more than 900 million users – this is just another feature aimed at luring in more privacy-centric users.
I think “disappearing” is the right word, because I doubt that the messages are actually deleted (at least not in Facebook’s database). This has little to do with privacy, it’s merely a gimmick. If you care about data protection, use a messenger like Threema instead of encouraging your contacts to take screenshots by sending them auto-destructive messages with a messenger that doesn’t even offer end-to-end encryption.