How to Start a Facebook Secret Conversation

June 4, 2021 By Christine Margret No Comments 4 minutes

Facebook Messenger has a useful feature that can protect your most private conversations. Users can choose to have secret conversations with friends. The features let you keep your messages unknown to your own Messenger chat history because they ‘self-destruct’ after a while.

The secret conversation feature enabled by default, users have to enable it before sending messages to the intended receiver.

Also, it’s worth knowing that without activating Facebook’s secret conversation, your conversation will not be end-to-end encrypted.

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How is Secret Conversation Different?

When you switch to the secret conversation feature, only the participating people can see the messages. The only catch is that the feature doesn’t support group chats and it is only compatible with a single chat head.

While enabling the Facebook private chat option, a new chat window pops out and it doesn’t make any difference to the rest of the conversations.

On the security front, the Facebook secret conversation is a must-have feature since it keeps your messages end-to-end encrypted between you and your receiver’s device. Above all, this feature also allows you to use its self-destruct option through which you can set the timer to erase the chat within a certain time limit.

In addition, all the encrypted messages are only available on the phone and you cannot open them from your PC because those chats cannot be uploaded to the Facebook cloud server.

Not only that, when you activate Facebook private chat feature, the sender’s name remains anonymous on the notification. You will only see a message that says someone has messaged you.

What is Facebook’s End-to-End Encryption?

End-to-end encryption is a way of securing messages that ensures no one except the sender and the receiver can read them. It uses public-key encryption to let users make their communication private.

A public key is used to encrypt a message by the sender, but only the receiver can decrypt it using the private key. It is only possible for the private key to decrypt the message because the sender uses the receiver’s public key to encrypt the message, and the two are mathematically linked. HTTPS is one example that uses end-to-end encryption for protecting communication between the client and the webserver.

How to Enable Facebook Secret Conversation

Secret mode conversations are safe as they cannot be accessed by the Government, hackers and even Facebook. However, you first have to enable it.

Again, go to Facebook Messenger Home Screen
Select the “pencil and square” icon in the upper right corner
Now, select “Secret” appearing in the upper right corner of the next screen
When you see a search bar, type in the name of the friend you want to have a secret chat with
Enjoy your chat!

How to Set the timer for Facebook Secret Conversation

The timer for Facebook secret conversation will let you disappear your messages when you want to. To set the timer you can follow the easy steps below:

See the field where you are typing messages.
Click on the small clock icon.
Now, you will see an option “Set Timer”.
From there, select your preferred time to allow messages to be shown in the secret conversation.
Once you have set the time, your messages will expire as per your chosen time length.

Note: The maximum time length for disappearing secret messages is 24 hours, and 10 seconds is the default time length that you can change.

What You Need to Know About Facebook Secret Conversation

Right now, the feature is only updated for Android and iOS messengers, meaning you cannot activate it when you’re logging into your Facebook account from the desktop. Secret conversation allows you to share text, stickers, and pictures. The feature doesn’t allow you to share gifs, payments, and videos.

Conclusion

The Facebook secret conversation is a privacy-friendly feature that you can enable to have a secure, end-to-end encrypted chat session with your friends. However, don’t forget to use a strong password and a VPN for better security against certain threats.