

Show HN: Online Privacy through Client-side Encryption - d0ne

Homepage: https://www.socialfortress.com<p>Social Fortress puts consumers back in control of their privacy online.<p>By transparently integrating into services such as Facebook, Google+, Gmail, Outlook and others Social Fortress maintains the same user experience while providing end-to-end client side encryption and decryption of your messages and photos.<p>The services (Facebook, Google, etc), the ISPs and other prying eyes no longer have access to the plain text of your communications or the content of your photos.<p>It takes less than a minute to register for an account, get the right plugin and be up and running with Social Fortress protection inside of your favorite service.<p>We just went into a soft open beta and would appreciate any and all feedback.<p>Thanks
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d0ne
Link and a bit more technical details:

<https://www.socialfortress.com/>

Social Fortress currently provides transparent client-side encryption and
decryption within Facebook, Google+, Thunderbird and Outlook for your messages
and photos.

When you download and install Social Fortress your plugin is customized to
sync with just your account and the key management server. This unique plugin
is authorized to request keys for messages for your Trusted Contacts and
generate new keys associated with your account.

The keys are generated in parallel on the client and on the key management
server. They are always rolling forward and are synced with the key management
server in real-time utilizing a few unique variables within your custom plugin
and a few generated randomly each time.

No two messages are encrypted with the same key and keys are only stored in
memory during the encryption / decryption process. Every time a message or
photo that has been protected is viewed, either by yourself or others,
authorization to that messages key is requested from the key management
server.

Your Trusted Contact list is managed globally by connecting with other users
through Social Fortress. Within Facebook all of your friends are initially
treated as Trusted Contacts and you can easily remove individuals from this
list with the click of a button.

Social Fortress uses AES-256 CTR for the encryption and communicates over a
256 SSL stream from your device to the key management server. The data in this
stream is also encrypted using aspects of your customized installation.

The technology for web services (Facebook, Google+) operates as browser plugin
for Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer[1] and independent of any service's
API.

The technology for Thunderbird and Outlook is a separate plugin which requires
installation.

We integrate transparently into the products we support so the user experience
is exactly the same. No extra clicks, no confusing decisions and nothing extra
to learn. We designed Social Fortress to be used by individuals who don't even
know what the word encryption is.

Within every environment you have the ability to enable / disable Social
Fortress protection with the click of a button or using a keyboard shortcut
(CTRL+Q). This only disables the encryption functions. The reader is always on
so messages and photos protected by your friends appear normal without you
having to protect your own. It's like having Flash or PDF Reader once it is
installed you don't ever have to do anything again.

If your device becomes compromised / lost / whatever you can login to the site
and disable all active installations in two clicks and this will not affect
previously encrypted messages as we just disable authorization access to your
old plugins and have no need to change any previously generated keys.

We also support other services but have yet to make them live:

Skype Chat

Twitter

mail.yahoo.com

Gmail.com

Chatter.com

Yammer.com

Blackberry Native Email support

[1] The IE Plugin is not currently part of the public beta.

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bmm6o
If it encrypts the photos and messages then everyone I want to share them with
also has to have this plugin installed?

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d0ne
Protected messages and photos, yes. You do have the option to toggle the
protection on and off in real-time.

