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I would love if someone made a Chrome extension that encrypted all the posts and messages you put on Facebook. That is, any post you made would be made as a cip
by ihm 9y ago
I would love if someone made a Chrome extension that encrypted all the posts and messages you put on Facebook. That is, any post you made would be made as a ciphertext, the extension would swap keys with all your friends in the background, and would decrypt their posts when displaying them to you.
Sure Marky Mark still sees when you post, who you send messages to, etc. but it's a much better situation than what's going on now. Plus it would probably put a dent in their bottom line, and so send them the message that privacy matters to people.
- wmeredith 9y agoEh, your head is in the right place, but honestly if you have all the meta data, the message content almost isn't needed.
- denzil_correa 9y agoExactly. I also think that encrypting data is a smokescreen to gain brownie points. Yes, it is more secure than not encrypting messages but the effect of message encryption on your privacy is very low.
- nsajko 9y agoSee my reply to ihm about how to deny Fb metadata.
- gruez 9y agoso like, PGP?
- fooker 9y agoBut for Facebook! Probably also need to throw in a Tinder and Uber to exchange keys properly.
- ghughes 9y agoYou're so close to what I am currently building that I feel like I have to chime in. I left Apple's security team a few months ago to go solo and build an app that is similar to Facebook/Instagram and Snapchat in terms of functionality and UX but uses the Olm protocol (similar to Signal) to protect all content. So, fear not - something is being done, and I'm sure I'm not the only one working in this problem space. I think it's ripe for innovation, counter to popular belief; the trick is to do it in a way that doesn't require a PhD in computers to operate the damn thing, as was the issue with previous attempts.
- omnimus 9y agoI run design collective (group of designers and design students) we have been looking for social media projects to help. Is your project aimed to be opensource or it is comercial bussiness? We could might be able to help. Even just with small things like design analisys and testing.
- ghughes 9y agoBoth; there will be ads and the source will be publicly available, license TBD. Please get in touch, email is in my profile.
- bigbugbag 9y agoAds means tracking a.k.a. no privacy.
- ghughes 9y agoNot necessarily: https://crypto.stanford.edu/adnostic/adnostic.pdf https://crypto.stanford.edu/adnostic/adnostic.pdf
- choward 9y agoAds? Ha. I'm out.
- killin_dan 9y agoYou just killed your project. Nobody is going to use a security centric product littered with ads. Ads are exactly what people should be worried about, tracking their tabs and browsing activities.
- ensiferum 9y agoI see the problem with this is gaining traction. With no users on board you'll have no users on board. Unless ofc you're just building this for yourself and your friends, which is something I thought about doing myself but then realized that even my friends cba to install yet another chat app.
- sandov 9y agoI had thought something similar, but with Google drive instead of Facebook. To create a rogue client that encrypts my files, uploads them to Drive encrypted, but presents them nicely unencrypted in my local machine. That way I get the free (as in beer) cloud storage, but google doesn't spy on my files.
- stevenhuang 9y agoArq Backup is a popular tool that does just that.
- dexterdog 9y agoThere are many tools that do that. On Windows I have used stablebit clouddrive which is great.
- ATsch 9y agoThis is Firefox only, but have a look at facecloak. https://crysp.uwaterloo.ca/software/facecloak/ https://crysp.uwaterloo.ca/software/facecloak/
- zeroer 9y agoIf you have out-of-band connections with all your friends and you have friends who are willing to jump through weird, nerdy, technical hoops, what do you need Facebook for?
- ihm 9y agoThere would be no out-of-band connections. The extension uses Diffie Hellman or something to swap keys with your friends over Facebook (or maybe through a server run by the extension provider.)
- deno 9y agoAt this point you are bootstrapping a parallel social network, with all the pitfalls this entails.
- bigbugbag 9y agoThis is missing the point as metadata is way more sensible than actual message content. Besides, being contrary to ToS you'd get your facebook account blocked or banned. Look at how fast AdNauseam got the boot from google to get an idea.
- nsajko 9y agoSee my reply to ihm about how to deny Fb metadata and circumvent usage restrictions.
- dkarapetyan 9y agoHow would you finance and support this endeavor? Also, why wouldn't Facebook ban all such users? Facebook is a private platform and they make the rules on how you get to play with it.
- nmgsd 9y agoI agree strongly with you that the direction to be taken is independent messaging clients for existing messaging channels as long as those channels allow third party API use. What channel would you use to share the keys on FB? The Facebook API simply will not let you do that anymore. Direct messages have a character limit and you can't just post to someone's wall anymore. I tried working on something like this for seecret.io but was confounded by the Facebook API's limitations. Twitter is much better for that. Probably other network too.
- nsajko 9y agoWhat's the point of encryption if you are going to share the keys via fb? That does not seem better than using a substitution cypher.
- ihm 9y agoYou use Diffie–Hellman. "Diffie–Hellman key exchange method allows two parties that have no prior knowledge of each other to jointly establish a shared secret key over an insecure channel." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie–Hellman_key_exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie–Hellman_key_exchange)
- nsajko 9y agoDon't know how many will read this now, I'd just like to point out that since you can only message addresses/accounts you're "friends with" on Fb AFAIK, you can effectively broadcast to all your friends without Fb knowing the plain-text recipients. It is simply necessary to have the plain-text in a publically known format, e.g. prepended with date or name or whatever. Then you post the cypher-text to your "timeline" (or whatever it's called) and try decrypting all your friends' posts to find which one is meant for you. To get around Fb-imposed usage restrictions use a steganography or obfuscation tool. https://seecret.io https://seecret.io is already linked to somewhere on this thread.