Facebook blocks Crypter which helped users encrypt messages before sending them | Hacker News Reader

Facebook blocks Crypter which helped users encrypt messages before sending them

crypter.co.uk

21 pointsmadhavcp9 comments

Note: I'm the author of a similar tool.

About 2 years ago I wrote Taniger which is a tool that does the same thing but without having to set a preset password for all chats (each message has its own encryption key).

What I found out during these 2 years is that facebook changes it's chat HTML from time to time making the encryption "not work" as it cannot detect the encrypted text. I believe this is what happened with crypter - but I can't be 100% sure as I don't have time today to check if that's the case (I tried installing it but I got an error message when I tried to set its password).

P.S. The Taniger site is currently offline as I'm re-writing it to support PGP encryption, but you can see a demo at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU57xQcAcd0 and get the code at https://github.com/sadreck/taniger

http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-puts-an-e... says

> Update on February 5: A Facebook rep on its security team tells us that, to the company’s knowledge, nothing has changed on its end and isn’t sure why the app isn’t working, indicating Facebook did not intentionally block Crypter from the network. The story has been updated accordingly.

Did anything more happen to indicate that it was intentionally blocked?

Hello guys,

Would really love some help with the final steps of reviving Crypter. We have now had to do a messy job in automating keypresses... But we are finding it very difficult to automate the enter keypress for the auto-encrypt function. Currently with the [GitHub](https://github.com/maxisme/crypter/blob/master/Chrome%20exte...), the user has to press enter twice (rather than once) when the Auto-Encrypt function is checked.

Thank you!

Two things come to my mind.

If you live under a regime that looks for dissenters in social networks, encryption will protect the message but not yourself: you'll stand out and they can come and ask you about the content of your messages. I won't feel much safer. They probably already know your contacts anyway.

What if you encrypt locally outside the browser and paste the ciphertext into FB? Are they going to block your account? Incidentally that would increase your security because you'll be forced to use more secure communication channels.

It boggles my mind that Facebook blocks message text between mutual friends. This could admittedly be useful for stopping hacked accounts from exploiting your trust to make you click bad links. But it should be enough to display a warning message, like Chrome does.

I suppose they're designing for users who don't want to deal with error messages, or wouldn't understand them.

They are designing for moderation, datamining and surveillance. If they stop being able to read your conversations, their value to advertisers and powerbrokers drops to zero. Nobody wants to be a dumb network switch.

I believe you have to be a special kind of crazy to use facebook or google communication products. Letting a company who's business revolves around knowing as much as possible about it's users be a central part of your communication and how you interact with society is outright stupid.

It's like they're schizophrenic. They want people to use Facebook over Tor, but refuse to allow encrypted messages?

Tor means they can sneak through state-level internet blocks and surveillance. Once they're on Facebook, they're (ostensibly) obeying their Real Name policy, so Facebook knows who they are. Their Tor support doesn't protect their identity or communications from Facebook itself, other than obscuring their IP address.

Encrypted chats, on the other hand, treats Facebook itself as untrusted. It lets people use Facebook without Facebook knowing exactly what they're up to.

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