In a new move made by Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is planning to integrate Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram together. This is going to happen by end-to-end encryption of all three apps. This move, as Mark Zuckerberg puts it, will protect messages from being viewed by anyone other than the participants in a conversation. However, the three social media platforms are going to act as stand-alone apps. After this has been implemented, a Facebook user will reportedly be able to send an encrypted message to a user who is not on Facebook, but WhatsApp or Instagram.
Though this has been targeted towards user safety, the technology won’t always conceal metadata. Researchers speculate that information about who is interacting with whom might be leaked. The probability of metadata integration to let Facebook learn more about users is high.
Basic information like phone numbers, email addresses just might be shared. And this data might be used by Facebook to charge more for advertising and targeted services. Messenger lets strangers contact people without sharing their phone numbers and so, stalking cases might not be curbed. Facebook accounts that have phone numbers will be given additional privacy concerns as government and other entities can easily extract location information from such sources.
Some do feel positively about the end-to end encryption of the apps, albeit admitting its precarious nature. This could help stop terrorism from happening in all these platforms, which Facebook is not taking seriously. There have been reports in the past that terrorists and cyber attackers might use non-secure messaging services. With ETEE the chances of using these platforms will go down considerably.
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