Well, I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you. And that’d be awkward.
Just kidding! No bodily harm is required – nor even a threat of bodily harm – for you to be able to use the new Facebook Secret Conversations feature in the service. You will, however, need to pick a single device for all your encrypted chats and they won’t be available on other devices. This means if you use your PC and tablet and smartphone, only one can be “secret conversations enabled”. But that’s a good thing, right?
It’s also a bit buried in the interface, which is a bit annoying, but once you set up an encrypted secret chat, you can always go back to it, so it’s kind of a “set and forget” feature.
Let’s have a look. I’ll be tapping my buddy Brian Hayashi as the recipient of my secret chat demo, and I’m using the latest version of Facebook for iPhone (it’s definitely different on the regular Web Facebook interface).
To start, I’ll jump into an older chat between Brian and myself, not secret, not encrypted:
Pretty typical stuff. So how do you turn this into a secret conversation? You can’t.
But what you can do is open up a new chat and the new one will be secret. To do that, tap on the person’s name on the very top of the screen. You’ll get to their profile info:
You can see the option you want at the bottom of the window! Tap on Secret conversation and if you’ve never designated a device before, Facebook will confirm that it’s the current device you’re on that should be designated the secret conversation device. Kind of “Mission: Impossible”, really!
Once you’re sure, tap on “Make Default” and your new conversation window opens up:
Notice at the top there’s a tiny padlock icon over Brian’s icon, and that Facebook also reminds you that it’s secure both by calling it “Secret conversation” and saying “Encrypted from one device to the other”.
Neat and easy.
But look more closely at the bottom, as there’s a new icon that shows up on the right of the entry window, a little clock face icon. We’ll get back to that, but for now, let’s just say “Hi”:
Even the messages are in different colors! Very, um, secure. 🙂
A tap on the timer icon and the new feature is revealed:
It’s a “self-destruct” timer for messages. So you can have a conversation where what you send to the other person has a lifespan of just a few seconds (or a bit longer) and then it vanishes. The phrase is plausible deniability and it’s very Snapchat-like. Remember, though, if they’re fast, they can still take a screenshot of what you share…
In fact, Facebook makes that very obvious, as you can see in the text entry box, below:
Can you see the text in red? “This will disappear 10 seconds after it’s seen.”
I test that out, of course!
Look very closely just to the left of the message “This only has a ten second lifespan”. Can you see the “0:05”? That’s the life of that particular message, ticking down until it vanishes on both ends of the conversation.
Really. Check this out, just 10 seconds later:
In fact, Brian’s message to me “Well that was nice” has a timer on it too, with 0:03 seconds left!
Leave the conversation or chat and when it shows up on your list of recent chats, notice that the tiny padlock icon remains as a reminder that it is a Facebook secret conversation:
Pretty slick, Facebook, and nicely implemented. Now I just need to figure out which of my Facebook chats deserves the special status of “secret conversation” with its timed messages and encryption!
