Facebook and PGP

Post by andrewflnr » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 4:56 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #15

michaelt wrote: post #2

Another possibility is one of their programmers thought "It would be good if there was more encrypted e-mail going around in general, I wonder if I can get it into facebook somehow" and coded this feature in their free time. Then convinced his managers to integrate it with that argument plus "and it's already coded we just need to merge it in"

"and it's already coded we just need to merge it in" Any manager worth their salt will know that maintaining code is 10x more expensive than building it in the first place, and if it's user-facing code you're even adding an implicit promise that the feature isn't going to be removed again. I strongly doubt the "oh but it would be so hard to build that" argument counts for much. That said, I've no idea about what kind…

Post by marcosdumay » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

anthony_barker wrote: post #46

Private public keys + verification gives way to lots of uses... Payments (bitcoin style currencies), banking, document signitures, and single sign-on?

Post by bostik » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 6:55 PM UTC

rmk2 wrote: post #48

A1kmm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what if the otherwise loathed real name policy could > be turned to service this particular need? The link between a real person and a Facebook account isn't secure - I could make an account with your name today without too much stress (no need to provide ID unless Facebook thinks your name isn't a real name).

I think the grandparent chose the wrong end of the stick with relating this to "famous" people, which, in turn, threw you off. Sure, you can register an account in my name, but there are quite a number of people who will not be fooled: people who actually know me. People who know me in real life can tell whether an account is real or not, because they can tell whether I post about things I do, whether I post pictures…

Post by omouse » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:09 PM UTC

alexbecker wrote: post #3

To me the strangest thing about this announcement is that, while the PGP user base is small, I imagine its intersection with Facebook's is much, much smaller. PGP is used by people who are extremely concerned with privacy, which is practically the antithesis of Facebook.

Post by cbhl » Thu, Jun 04, 2015, 3:43 AM UTC

bostik wrote: post #56

cbhl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of keybase.io? They don't do Facebook, but you can tie a PGP key to various other public identities (Twitter, GitHub, HN, Reddit, etc.)

I had heard about them but never had taken a good look. Now I did and choose not to deal with them. Some quotes from their website: > certain crypto actions (signing and decrypting) are limited to users who store client-encrypted copies of their private keys on the server No. Especially combined with the next one: > On the website, all crypto is performed in JavaScript, in your browser. Some people have strong feelin…