A news story has been rehashed many times today, usually summed up as “Facebook is going to support ENCRYPTION”.
Ugh. That’s not even close to correct.
Facebook already supports end-to-end encryption. If you see “https” or a padlock on your browser, you are already using Transport Layer Security, which means this : Everything is encrypted.
The original Guardian article says that the rumor is ___tougher___ encryption, which could mean a lot of things. Maybe a harder-to-crack algorithm, or a promise from Facebook that the messages will be stored encrypted on their own servers, which they currently are not (probably).
That last possibility is significant, since storing encrypted data would mean that Facebook would not be able to hand over messages to anyone due to hacking or court orders.
