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Facebook Introduces New Features for End-to-End Encrypted Messenger App

Facebook Introduces New Features for End-to-End Encrypted Messenger App

Jan 24, 2023 Encryption / Privacy
Meta Platforms on Monday announced that it has started to expand global testing of end-to-end encryption ( E2EE ) in Messenger chats by default. "Over the next few months, more people will continue to see some of their chats gradually being upgraded with an extra layer of protection provided by end-to-end encryption," Meta's Melissa Miranda  said . The social media behemoth said it intends to notify users in select individual chat threads as the security feature is enabled, while emphasizing that the process of choosing and upgrading the conversations to support E2EE is random. "It's designed to be random so that there isn't a negative impact on our infrastructure and people's chat experience," Miranda further explained. Along with flipping the switch on E2EE, Meta has also added more features into its encrypted chat experience, including support for themes, custom emojis and reactions, group profile photos, link previews, and active status. T
Facebook Testing Default End-to-End Encryption and Encrypted Backups in Messenger

Facebook Testing Default End-to-End Encryption and Encrypted Backups in Messenger

Aug 12, 2022
Social media company Meta said it will begin testing end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on its Messenger platform this week for select users as the default option, as the company continues to slowly add security layers to its various chat services. "If you're in the test group, some of your most frequent chats may be automatically end-to-end encrypted, which means you won't have to opt in to the feature," Sara Su, product management director of Messenger Trust,  said . The incremental development comes a year after it  turned on E2EE  for audio and video calls on the messaging service as well as for one-on-one chats in Instagram, and enabled  encrypted chat backups  for WhatsApp on Android and iOS. E2EE is a secure communication mechanism that scrambles data in transit and prevents third-parties from unauthorizedly accessing information sent from one endpoint to another, including Meta. "This is because with end-to-end encryption, your messages are secured with a
How to Find and Fix Risky Sharing in Google Drive

How to Find and Fix Risky Sharing in Google Drive

Mar 06, 2024Data Security / Cloud Security
Every Google Workspace administrator knows how quickly Google Drive becomes a messy sprawl of loosely shared confidential information. This isn't anyone's fault; it's inevitable as your productivity suite is purposefully designed to enable real-time collaboration – both internally and externally.  For Security & Risk Management teams, the untenable risk of any Google Drive footprint lies in the toxic combinations of sensitive data, excessive permissions, and improper sharing. However, it can be challenging to differentiate between typical business practices and potential risks without fully understanding the context and intent.  Material Security, a company renowned for its innovative method of protecting sensitive data within employee mailboxes, has recently launched  Data Protection for Google Drive  to safeguard the sprawl of confidential information scattered throughout Google Drive with a powerful discovery and remediation toolkit. How Material Security helps organ
New Settings Let Hackers Easily Pentest Facebook, Instagram Mobile Apps

New Settings Let Hackers Easily Pentest Facebook, Instagram Mobile Apps

Mar 26, 2019
Facebook has introduced a new feature in its platform that has been designed to make it easier for bug bounty hunters to find security flaws in Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Android applications. Since almost all Facebook-owned apps by default use security mechanisms such as Certificate Pinning to ensure integrity and confidentiality of the traffic, it makes it harder for white hat hackers and security researchers to intercept and analyze network traffic to find server-side security vulnerabilities. For those unaware, Certificate Pinning is a security mechanism designed to prevent users of an application from being a victim of network-based attacks by automatically rejecting the whole connection from sites that offer bogus SSL certificates. Dubbed " Whitehat Settings ," the new option now lets researchers easily bypass Certificate Pinning on the Facebook-owned mobile apps by: Disabling Facebook's TLS 1.3 support Enabling proxy for Platform API requests
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Facebook Messenger App — Choose either End-to-End Encryption or Artificial Intelligence

Facebook Messenger App — Choose either End-to-End Encryption or Artificial Intelligence

Jun 03, 2016
Facebook is set to introduce end-to-end encryption for its Messenger app , allowing more than its 900 Million users to send and receive messages that can not be read or intercepted by law enforcement or even the social network itself. However, it's not the kind of end-to-end encrypted chat feature provided by Apple or WhatsApp in which all your conversation are entirely encrypted by default. Instead, the social networking giant will offer an end-to-end encrypted chat mode in Messenger as opt-in, just like Google's Allo smart chat app that provides encrypted chat feature only if users opt for it. Privacy advocates criticized Google for adding its ' incognito ' encrypted chat mode as an opt-in feature, rather than offering end-to-end encryption by default. Now, Facebook Messenger will roll out the same choice for its users in the next few months, when the company will roll out this new encrypted chat mode in Messenger as an opt-in feature, reports  The Guardian.
WhatsApp is Now Free For Lifetime

WhatsApp is Now Free For Lifetime

Jan 18, 2016
Good News for WhatsApp users! The widely popular messaging service is going completely free. And you'll be able to use WhatsApp without paying a penny. Old WhatsApp users might not be aware of this, but WhatsApp introduced the subscription fees for its service a few years ago, forcing new users to pay an annual 99 cents (~$1) subscription fee after the first year. However, WhatsApp announced Monday that the Facebook-owned company is dropping its annual subscription fee to make its service free to all users. While announcing the plan today, WhatsApp's founder Jan Koum stated that the annual subscription fee was still a barrier to some users. "As we have grown, we have found that this approach has not worked well," WhatsApp admitted in a company blog post today. "Many WhatsApp users do not have a debit or credit card number, and they worried they'd lose access to their friends and family after their first year." What will be What
Facebook will Let You Send Self-Destructing Messages with Messenger App

Facebook will Let You Send Self-Destructing Messages with Messenger App

Nov 13, 2015
Facebook is planning to offer you the popular Snapchat feature in its Messenger app – ' Self-Destructing' Messages . Yes, Facebook is testing a new feature within its Messenger app that will allow its users to send self-destructing messages. Some Facebook users in France have spotted this new feature in the Messenger app that lets them send messages that only last for an hour. How to Turn ON the Feature? Users can turn on the self-destructing message feature within Messenger through an hourglass icon on the top-right corner of the conversation. The icon, when tapped, sets the messages to self-destruct after an hour of sending it. Tapping the hourglass icon again will turn off the feature, with everything going back to normal. Here's what Facebook says about the feature: "We're excited to announce the latest in an engaging line of optional product features geared towards making Messenger the best way to communicate with the people that
You Can Now Use Messenger App without a Facebook Account

You Can Now Use Messenger App without a Facebook Account

Jun 26, 2015
Don't have Facebook account but want to use its Messenger service? Then go for it because Mark Zuckerberg wants even the people who hate Facebook to use the social network's separate Messenger service . So, you no longer need an active Facebook account to make use of the Messenger service, all you need is just your name and phone number, the company announced today. Facebook is giving a new " Not On Facebook? " option on the sign-up screen for its messaging app, which allows anyone to create an account for the Messenger app using his or her first name and phone number. Facebook to offer Messenger to people without Facebook account Facebook currently started offering this option for people in the United States, Canada, Peru, and Venezuela; the rest have to wait for the feature. Users with non-Facebook accounts will enjoy the same Messenger features, including voice and video calls, payments, stickers and GIFs. The only and major differenc
This Facebook Hack Allows You to Track Your Friends On Map

This Facebook Hack Allows You to Track Your Friends On Map

May 27, 2015
Remember the magical Marauder's Map from the Harry Potter books that reveal the whereabouts of characters as they roam classrooms and the halls of Hogwarts school? A student developer from Cambridge has created a Chrome extension that works similar and also named it Marauder's Map . The extension that allows you to watch every footstep of your Facebook friends by grabbing location data from Facebook Messenger and rapidly plotting your friends' locations on a map. We all are aware that Facebook shares our location data with our friends, however, what we probably aren't aware of the accuracy of that data and easiness of extracting that data from the messaging service. LOCATION SHARING AND MAPPING... Facebook usually encourages Messenger users to share their location by enabling location sharing by default when users install iOS or Android app. Software developer Aran Khanna's extension dubbed Marauder's Map, loads the map in Messenger's Web interface and fetc
Facebook Starts WhatsApp Integration for Android Users

Facebook Starts WhatsApp Integration for Android Users

Apr 06, 2015
Is Facebook planning to integrate WhatsApp Messenger into its ' Facebook for Android ' app? Yes, this might be possible soon. According to latest rumours, Facebook is reportedly working on it. The social network giant, Facebook has begun testing a new feature in its Facebook app for Android that includes the first integration of WhatsApp Messenger, according to a blogger. WHATSAPP INTEGRATION INTO FACEBOOK APP According to this update, a year after of acquiring WhatsApp Messenger, Facebook has only added a 'Send' button with the WhatsApp icon. This WhatsApp ' send ' will work as part of the status actions options that appear under each status update. It means that Facebook for Android users soon may have this particular version of Facebook app with a dedicated WhatsApp button that would allow an Android user to share posts, status and anything else directly through WhatsApp by just clicking the Share button. If rumours are true, th
Facebook Messenger Platform Launches at F8 Developer Conference

Facebook Messenger Platform Launches at F8 Developer Conference

Mar 26, 2015
Yesterday at its annual F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco, Facebook officially turned its Messenger app into a Platform. Facebook's Messenger Platform allows third-party app developers to integrate their apps with Facebook messenger app. However, other popular messaging apps are already offering similar features, like Chinese WeChat, but Facebook release is much bigger than any other platform. At F8 Developer Conference, Facebook released SDK v4.0 for iOS and Android along with Graph API v2.3 that enable app developers to add new messenger platform features to their custom apps quickly. Facebook users can install these compatible third-party apps from the messenger app, which offers users to send animated GIFs, images, videos, and more content within the Facebook Messenger app easily. BOON FOR BOTH FACEBOOK AND THIRD PARTY DEVELOPERS Facebook Messenger Platform will offer third party app developers to reach out Facebook's 600 Millions of users. So, the move will be a
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