Facebook will enable encryption keys to be added to personal profiles to enhance security even further and further eradicate privacy invasion crimes and similar issues that occur on the social media platform.
The company will be utilizing a high-end encryption program called Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) in this move to answer calls for further user information and privacy protection. The PGP will prevent people snooping around Facebook to see notification messages from coming into a user's inbox. The sender and receiver of the message will be the only ones to see it, as it should be.
The software is considered as one of the most high-tech privacy protection program in existence.
However, the feature does not remove Facebook's control over its users. Seth Schoen, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's senior staff technologist, clarifies that the site will still have access to any information.
"Facebook's announcement is about better protecting its communications with users - in the form of e-mail notifications - from spying by other parties. [But], it doesn't limit or control what Facebook knows about its users in any new way," Schoen explains in an email.
While users are happy that their sensitive communication will now be guarded, authorities are worried that this feature would limit them since they cannot decrypt it even if they have search warrant. This has become unfavorable to law enforcement as they will end up losing access to possible evidences.
Besides Facebook, other technology companies like Google and Apple have also taken measures to boost privacy protection of their products and services. Google released a privacy product called 'My Account" which allows user to check and change the amount of data they share with Google services.
Despite the efforts made by Facebook, others are still not confident. Privacy experts think that this will only give partial security.
