Facebook today rolled out end-to-end encryption as an option for voice and video chats on its Messenger application — a function that has been available for the app's text chat since 2016.

"In the past year, we've seen a surge in the use of audio and video calling with more than 150 million video calls a day on Messenger. Now we're introducing calling to this chat mode so you can secure your audio and video calls with this same technology, if you choose," Ruth Kricheli, director of product management for Messenger, wrote in a blog post today announcing the new features.

Facebook also has updated the "expiring message" feature in its encrypted chat, now offering time frames from 5 seconds to 24 hours for a message to automatically disappear.

"End-to-end encryption is already widely used by apps like WhatsApp to keep personal conversations safe from hackers and criminals," Kricheli said. "The content of your messages and calls in an end-to-end encrypted conversation is protected from the moment it leaves your device to the moment it reaches the receiver’s device. This means that nobody else, including Facebook, can see or listen to what's sent or said."

Next from the social media platform: a test run of end-to-end encryption for Instagram DMs, and testing of end-to-end encryption for group chats, voice, and video calls.

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