Here's the solution if Facebook and Messenger keep asking for your PIN

Anyone who regularly uses Meta's messenger, Messenger, whether in a browser or on a smartphone, may have recently encountered the “phenomenon” that when opening the chat service or one of the previous conversations, a window appeared with a request

Enter your PIN to sync your chat history.

This may come as a surprise to many because the service has never requested this before, and most of them have not set such a code, even though the system behaves as if this had happened. There's a reason for this, and we can tell you how to configure this code to “respond” to these types of requests.

Why does Facebook ask for a PIN?

Before we get to the solution, let's quickly cover why the Meta requires this code. Mark Zuckerberg His company expanded its scope to include all Messenger conversations last December End-to-end encryption, which means, somewhat simplistically, that messages can only be read by the people participating in the conversation, and no one else, and a “lock” is essentially placed on them, the key to which only the recipient has. Of course, this must be understood as the devices used by the recipient, i.e. mobile phones, computers and other devices.

There are several devices that cause some problems here, because – in theory – in order for us to be able to read all the previous messages on each device, we need a “key”, which is a PIN, and by entering this, different devices can access the previous messages. For encrypted conversations. This is thanks to Meta's so-called secure storage solution, which stores our encrypted conversations in the cloud so that they can be accessed anywhere, anytime – after entering a PIN.

Of course I would like to add that the word “theoretically” was not mentioned by chance, because it regularly happened to me and my colleagues that we did not enter the required PIN, but the Messenger still started loading previous messages that were not entered by the currently user that we typed on the device and received previously.

This is how to set a PIN

When a window appears asking for a PIN when opening Meta Services, you can choose another option, that is Instead, use a one-time code The option we choose to receive a code for another device on which we use Facebook. Of course, it would be much easier than this if we could always enter the originally required PIN, which, however, should not be set on the Facebook page in the browser or in the smartphone application, but in the Messenger application. We will search for this option in vain on the separate messenger.com page.

• Open the Messenger application on your phone,
• Select the three horizontal lines button in the upper left corner,
• Click on the gear in the right corner of the window that appears,
• Let's find it Privacy and security menu item,
• Within it, select A End-to-end encrypted conversations option,
• Let's poke here Message storage an opportunity,
• Select it Set a new PIN menu item and enter the PIN.

At that point, all we have to do is remember the PIN and then enter it When the Messenger or Messenger option opens within the Facebook page, a window appears asking for the number line again. If we did, all our affected devices would surely read our encrypted messages.

It's also worth noting that a more secure 40-character code can be chosen instead of a PIN, and Google Drive can also be used as a security method on Android (iCloud is an option of choice here on Apple devices).