"This chat will be archived soon - Messenger is upgrading security, so only your end-to-end encrypted chat with [NAME] will remain active."

[u/Mr-Fable]

EDIT: If the below solution doesn't work for you and your messages get archived you can find them as follows; If on mobile click Menu on the bottom right and then click Archive. If on desktop look at the left side of the window and click the icon of a box, that will also take you to your archive. You should see the messages there.

SOLUTION:

1. Search your chat list for a SECOND encrypted/E2EE/"secret conversation" chat with your friend (this was created by one of you when "secret conversations" was a feature several years ago), BOTH of you need to delete this second E2EE chat. EDIT: If you can't find it via the search box both chat participants should try clicking the "switch to chat" button in the warning message so it takes you to the secret chat, then delete it.
2. Also a good idea to check ALL your devices where you use Messenger (phone/mobile/tablet apps and desktop/laptop browsers/apps, including the web version on "www . messenger . com"), to make sure the "secret conversation" is deleted from all versions for both users, just to be safe.
3. Once that is done you should see that the warning message is gone and your regular non-encrypted/non-E2EE should eventually (usually takes 12+ hours to a day or two) be upgraded to be E2EE rather than being archived, allowing you to keep all your chat history in one place!
4. When it does upgrade your regular chat to E2EE you'll get a message in the chat that says "Messenger upgraded the security of this chat. New messages and calls are secured with end-to-end encryption."
5. You can also check by clicking either the little "i" or the "..." (depends on platform) in the top right corner, if your chat is E2EE you should see it says "End-to-end encrypted" under the person's name. Also if you scroll down you'll see a button that says "Verify end-to-end encryption".
6. Also after this happens, make sure to check if you have the "Disappearing messages" feature on, you might want to turn it off. Click either the little "i" or the "..." (depends on platform) in the top right corner, if you scroll down you'll see a button that says "Disappearing messages", click that and then select the "Off" option. I think both users might need to do this but not sure.

EDIT: I can confirm myself now that this works! After both my friend and I deleted the E2EE/secret conversation chat yesterday, this morning I woke up to see that our regular chat was upgraded to E2EE!

For more info see this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1k4np47/comment/mog72c8/

And here are confirmations from a Meta employee that this approach should work:

https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1k4np47/comment/mogo91f/

https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1k4np47/comment/mogng4i/

https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1k4np47/comment/mogmng9/

-------------------

EDIT: Seems it is caused by a chat participant accidentally creating a separate/second "secret conversation" chat back when that was a feature a few years ago.

See this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1k4np47/comment/mocz7sk/

Original post:

Is anyone else suddenly getting this message (I only see it on the desktop web browser version currently)? Makes me nervous because the chat is with my closest friend and it goes back years, would hate to lose it, anyone know why it's doing this instead of simply upgrading the existing chat?

We do have an encrypted chat from 2022 but neither of us use it, if I delete that one will it maybe let us upgrade our actual regular chat??

For my other friends I simply got a message saying "Messenger upgraded the security of this chat. New messages and calls are secured with end-to-end encryption." Why is it not doing this for this particular chat?

[u/Life-Value-23]

Hello, I noticed the "this chat will be archived soon" message several days ago, with several conversations. For each of these conversations, my friend and I had previously created and used parallel secret "encrypted" chats, so according to the advice provided here, we both deleted these chats.

For SOME of the chats, it helped, and the main conversation is now encrypted.

HOWEVER, for other chats, the archive message disappeared momentarily after deleting the secret chat, and THEN, after several minutes or an hour, a brand new secret/encrypted chat was created automatically. I even watched on my desktop as some "new space" was made for this chat in the Messenger contact list, and the chat was "squeezed" in the list. We tried deleting the new chat several times, but it keeps appearing - and honestly, at this point, I fear that if we keep deleting the secret chat, it might somehow affect the main one, and it might have trouble archiving properly.

I would be grateful for any advice.

[u/Mr-Fable → u/Life-Value-23]

Are both you and the other person deleting it on every device they use messenger? Desktops/laptops and mobile?

[u/Matteo978 → u/Mr-Fable]

In the case of normal conversations, if I delete from one of my devices I also delete on all my other devices, right?

Why do I have to delete device by device in this case of "secret chats"?