Microsoft has just launched end-to-end encryption for calls and texts to its Skype app, and that goes for both Android and iOS, while desktop users can also take advantage of this new feature. This feature may be better known as ‘private conversations’, and it had been announced quite some time ago, that feature has been in testing for a while, as the company was preparing it for a release to everyone.
So, how does this work? Well, if you’ve been using private conversations on other platforms, you have a pretty good idea as to what this is, though it’s possible it works a bit differently on Skype, depending on what app you used it in before. If the person you want to chat with accepts your invitation for a private chat, Microsoft’s technology will better protect that conversation. For example, if you activate private calls, eavesdroppers will find it hard to do anything, same goes for chats. If you activate this new feature, specific content will even be hidden from the notification shade, messages from private chats, for example. This feature does come with a catch, though, you can only activate a private conversation on one device at a time. Skype gives you an option to switch conversations to some other device, but do keep in mind that you can only see private messages on one device at a time.
As you’ve probably already realized, this option is completely optional, and you cannot set Skype to default to private conversations and calls, while WhatsApp, for example, is a completely different story. In any case, if you’d like to try out this feature on your smartphone, all you need to do is make sure that your Skype app is up-to-date. Once you do that, you can tap the ‘New Chat’ icon, and select ‘Private Conversation’, in order to initiate it.