Messenger Now Sends A Notification When Someone Takes A Screenshot In Secret Chats

The goal is to avoid saving, or re-sharing messages initially thought to be ephemeral. Notifications for Messenger screenshots are not the only novelty that looks at privacy and security in chat.” Within the next few weeks, “as stated in the official announcement, you could receive notifications for screenshots on Messenger.

When the chat is in private mode, and the sender has set a time interval for the self-destruction of the exchanged messages, the same could be automatically warned if the recipient takes a screenshot of the conversation or the media it contains. As underlined by the Meta team, the reason is a security reason.

How Notifications For Screenshots Will Work In Messenger In Secret Chats

That of ephemeral and self-destructing messages is a setting that instant messaging apps – and others – have long ago “copied” to Snapchat, aware that creating ” a space where you can express yourself ” to the fullest and freely, and where users consequently want to spend more time, it can also switch from allowing them to share photos, videos and any other type of information only temporarily with their interlocutor.

Saving the chat screen is the “tactic” that, in some cases, users use to circumvent the very mechanism of ephemeral messages: the intentions can be of the most varied and do not exclude keeping or re-sharing intimate shots, for example, or using this type of media or any other information for blackmail purposes. 

In short, notifications for screenshots on Messenger, already active for brief chats and now arriving for secret talks, will warn the sender of unusual behavior on the part of the interlocutor so that, after receiving them, the same can ask for clarifications or the worst case block the user and report the conversation.

People expect their messaging apps to be safe and respectful of privacy,” the Messenger team believes. This is why, to make the user experience even “richer,” notifications for screenshots on Messenger in chats secrets arrive together with various other innovations devoted to user safety.

The Other Ways Meta Is Now Targeting Chat Security On Messenger

Most importantly, it’s also applying end-to-end encryption to group chats and calls in Messenger. Over time, E2EE has become a sort of “gold standard” for instant messaging apps because it ensures that the content of the messages exchanged is accessible only to the sender and final recipient, effectively preventing the information from being hacked, made available to political or governmental subjects for reasons of cyber surveillance or warfare or transferred to third parties for commercial reasons.

As TechCrunch points out, Meta is late in the transition to end-to-end encryption for instant messaging apps: the same may not be complete before 2023. The company had announced the arrival of the E2EE standard in group chats and calls on Messenger in 2021  and continued with tests within conversations between existing friends and family and with the progressive rollout of the setting before announcing a few days ago that it had made the exact version available to everyone. 

However, switching to end-to-end encryption in group chats on Messenger is currently optional. It is up to the user to choose this method of exchanging messages, according to an opt-in mechanism. Even on chats encrypted in this way and to ” make the experience when messaging better, “the team underlines again, however now, for the first time, stickers, gifs, and Reactions are arriving, an indicator to understand if your interlocutors are writing and the Reply function to reply to a specific message among other new features.

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