Social network giant Facebook is bumping up its privacy and security features by allowing users to take advantage of the OpenPGP encryption standard in protecting their email notifications as well as create their own public encryption key that they can share with their friends.
PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy, is a data encryption and decryption protocol that gives its user cryptographic privacy as well as authentication for data communication. This data security protocol uses public key cryptography where users generate a public and private key and use it to encrypt their data and share those keys to the recipient of the data in order for them to decrypt it, according to Mashable.
Facebook will roll out the new security feature on June 2, Tuesday, according to its official security page. Despite the new security and privacy protocol, Facebook does not guarantee that all its communication service is well-protected. The adoption of the PGP protocol will have a big impact on Facebook especially for those who use the social network as a medium for activism, according to Wired.
The PGP feature can be used to encrypt emails, message notification and friend requests. Facebook added that direct messages sent from one person to another will be not be encrypted. This means that if a user's Facebook account is compromised, or requested by a law enforcement agencies to be accessed, messages stored within the user's profile are still accessible and readable.
Since the start of 2015, Facebook has been ramping up its security protocols. Earlier this year, the company announced that it will provide funds for the research and development of GnuPG. The GnuPG project aims to implement the OpenPGP standards in a free and open source environment.