Friday is the last day for your encrypted Instagram DMs. After May 8, the platform will no longer support the feature, it announced in a help post.
Instagram said in March that it would stop offering end-to-end encryption to its roughly 3 billion users worldwide. At the time, Meta said the feature, which required people on the platform to opt in, had a low adoption rate.
A Meta spokesperson told CNET that nothing has changed in its plans since that announcement and repeated a statement from March: “Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we’re removing this option from Instagram in the coming months. Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp.”
WhatsApp is also owned by Meta.
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The change means that there’s no longer the option to keep private messages on Instagram shielded from potentially prying eyes. By default, if law enforcement agencies are given access to someone’s Instagram messages, there’s no encryption to prevent them from reading them. With the option enabled, Instagram users could keep messages private, with only the keys on their devices able to unlock them. However, anyone in an encrypted chat could also share messages with Meta if they were reporting an incident, or with anyone else if they chose.
How to get your encrypted messages
According to the help page message, you’ll be able to download any encrypted messages you have: “If you have chats that are affected by this change, you will see instructions on how you can download any media or messages you may want to keep,” the company said. “If you’re on an older version of Instagram, you may also need to update the app before you can download your affected chats.”
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