Facebook has long promised to provide strong end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for users to protect the private contents of their messages. However, the company has faced strong headwinds from experts and regulators who believe the technology could be used as a shield by bad actors to protect their communications from law enforcement. But despite these objections, Facebook is plowing ahead with its plans, and reiterated this week that the security feature will be rolled out to all users by the end of the year.

As it currently stands, Messenger users can opt into E2EE, but it isn’t a default feature for all users. Facebook promises that will be the case this year, while one executive teased that this could be also be the case for Instagram chats.

“Starting today, millions more people’s chats on Messenger will be upgraded to stronger encryption standards as part of our ongoing E2EE testing,” the blog post said. “We remain on track to launch default E2EE for one-to-one friends and family chats on Messenger by the end of the year.”

While encryption is a controversial technology, it’s still a big net positive that Facebook is set to dramatically improve the privacy of hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

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