
Facebook blocks Crypter which helped users encrypt messages before sending them - madhavcp
https://crypter.co.uk/
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howlett
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU57xQcAcd0)
and get the code at
[https://github.com/sadreck/taniger](https://github.com/sadreck/taniger)

------
tveita
[http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-puts-
an-e...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-puts-an-end-to-
message-encryption-app-crypter/) 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?

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crypter
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...](https://github.com/maxisme/crypter/blob/master/Chrome%20extension/background.js)),
the user has to press enter twice (rather than once) when the Auto-Encrypt
function is checked.

Thank you!

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pmontra
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.

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flashman
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.

~~~
toyg
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.

------
Johnny_Brahms
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.

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

~~~
roywiggins
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.

