SAN FRANCISCO:Facebook said Friday it is trying to get its messaging apps to be friends,allowing encrypted missives be exchanged no matter which of its services areused. The leading social network is behind free, stand-alone smartphone appsInstagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. Each service is popular, but users have tobe in the same application to exchange to connect.
"We'reworking on making more of our messaging products end-to-end encrypted and consideringways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks," aFacebook spokeswoman said in reply to an AFP inquiry regarding a New York Timesreport about the effort. "As you would expect, there is a lot ofdiscussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all thedetails of how this will work."
Facebook hoped toget the messaging apps communicating with one another, while remaining separateservices, by the end of this year or early next year, according to the Times report.Each of the Facebook-owned messaging services boasts more than a billion users.End-to-end encryption would mean messages exchanged between the services wouldbe scrambled to hide contents from snooping. - AFP