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The message Facebook showed users ahead of deprecating PGP encrypted emails.Image Credits:TechCrunch screenshot
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In 2015 , as part of the wave of encrypting all the thing on the internet , encouraged bythe Edward Snowden revelations , Facebook declare thatit would allow users to receive encrypted emails from the ship’s company .
Even at the time , this was a feature film for the paranoid users . By release on the feature , all emails get off from Facebook — mostly notifications of “ likes ” and secret messages — to the substance abuser who opted - in would be cipher with the decades - old technology call up Pretty Good Privacy , or PGP .
Eight years by and by , Facebook is killing the feature article due to low usance , according to the company . The feature was deprecated Tuesday .
Facebook declined to specify precisely how many users were still using the encrypted email feature . It is not strong to conceive that practically nobody was using it . And as much as I have it away encryption , kill this lineament makes a lot of mother wit .
First of all , you’re able to switch off email notifications entirely for the simple grounds that you’re able to see those notification in Facebook ’s app or in the web browser . Why would you need to get notified twice that your admirer tagged you without asking for permit in that party photo where you are drunk ?
For exemplar , I used the e-mail encryption feature article at the time , but I also later interchange off email notifications , so that feature was useless to me .
Also , who the hell uses PGP in the year of our lord 2023 ? Even the artificer of PGP , the revered cryptographer Phil Zimmermann , say he was n’t using PGPback in 2015 .
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“ The caustic remark is not lost on me,”Zimmerman told me in an e-mail at the time .
Zimmermann read that the principal reasonableness he was n’t using PGP is that he could n’t start the necessary encryption software on his MacBook , sinceSymantec bought PGP in 2010to incorporate the applied science into its own product . Zimmerman also said there was “ no version of PGP ever ran on an iOS machine . ” ( It is worth note that you’re able to encrypt emails and files on Macs usingGPG Tools , which dish up as PGP ’s de facto transposition after the Symantec acquisition — if you like to inflict that kind of pain on yourself . )
I still use PGPveryoccasionally . If you need to annoy me , you could usemy public PGP keyto send me an inscribe substance , which would be so much easy to read and respond to if you send off it to me on Signal or WhatsApp instead .
Rest in peace , Facebook email encryption . You wo n’t really be pretermit .
