Facebook tests end-to-end encryption on Messenger in secret chat mode

Facebook has began testing end-to-end encryption on its popular Messenger application to prevent snooping on digital conversations. 

The limited testing on Messenger, which has more than 900 million users, comes three months after Facebook rolled out end-to-end encryption to its more popular WhatsApp, a messaging application with over 1 billion users that it acquired in October 2014. 

The move comes amid widespread global debate over the extent to which technology companies should help law enforcement snoop on digital communications. 

End-to-end encryption is also offered on Apple Inc's  iMessage platform as well as apps including LINE, Signal, Viber, Telegram and Wickr.

Facebook Messenger uses the same encryption technology as WhatsApp, which uses a protocol known as Signal that was developed by privately held Open Whisper Systems.

"It seems well designed," said Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins University cryptologist who helped review an early version of the protocol for Facebook. 

While WhatsApp messages are encrypted by default, Facebook Messenger users must turn on the feature to get the extra additional security protection, which scrambles communications so they can only be read on devices at either end of a conversation. 

Facebook said that it was requiring users to opt in to encryption because the extra security is not compatible with some widely used Messenger features. 

"Many people want Messenger to work when you switch between devices, such as a tablet, desktop computer or phone," the company said in an announcement on its website. "Secret conversations can only be read on one device and we recognize that experience may not be right for everyone."

Facebook also said that Messenger users cannot send videos or make payments in encrypted conversations.

Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the ACLU, called on Facebook to commit to rolling out encryption by default once it irons out any bugs in the new technology. 

"Encryption is best when it is hidden, invisible to the user and turned on by default," said Soghoian. 

Source: Reuters

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Facebook launches OpenCellular, an open-source wireless platform

Facebook today pulled the covers off its latest networking hardware initiative, this one focused on providing connectivity to people. It’s called OpenCellular, and Facebook intends to share the design specifications with other companies in the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) it established earlier this year.

OpenCellular builds on the Terragraph and Aries hardware projects that Facebook introduced in April. OpenCellular is different because it’s a low-cost means for service providers to expose a variety of cellular and wireless internet connection speeds in both rural and urban settings. (By contrast, Terragraph is focused exclusively on urban deployments.

As for Aries, Facebook is trying to figure out how that technology could “provide backhaul for OpenCellular,” a spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email.) Clearly this system is meant to be flexible.

“For instance, the system, due to its on-board computing and storage capacity, can be configured as network-in-a-box or purely as a cellular access point,” Facebook engineer Kashif Ali wrote in a blog post on the news.

The work runs parallel to Google parent company Alphabet’s efforts to expand internet connectivity globally. Specifically there have been the Project Loon air balloons and Wi-Fi connections at train stations. In this instance Facebook is not directly promoting the use of its applications through the networking system, but one can draw the implicit connection — the more people who use the Internet, the more who use Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and so on.
 
Facebook is testing OpenCellular inside labs at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and employees have managed to use it for texting, making phone calls, and consuming data over 2G connections. Up next, there will be trials with members of TIP. Current members include Deutsche Telekom of Germany, BT subsidiary EE of the United Kingdom, Globe Telecom of the Philippines, and SK Telecom of South Korea.

The hardware design is meant to be not only flexible but also durable.

“We designed an innovative mounting solution that can handle high winds, extreme temperatures, and rugged climates in all types of communities around the world. The device can be deployed by a single person and at a range of heights — from a pole only a few feet off the ground to a tall tower or tree,” Ali wrote.


 Source: Venturebeat

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Facebook will now automatically translate posts into different languages

Facebook on Friday began testing a translation tool that will automatically let posts be displayed in languages users prefer.

The leading social network first made the "multilingual composer" tool available earlier this year for use on pages representing companies, brands, groups and celebrities through its Pages service.

Now it will be available to general users.

"Page authors and other people on Facebook can compose a single post in multiple languages, and the viewers who speak one of those languages will see the post in their preferred language only—allowing people to more easily interact with their diverse audiences," the company said.

Half of Facebook's more than 1.5 billion users worldwide speaks a language other than English, the California-based social network says.

Among factors Facebook will use to determine which language to use for posts include locales designated in account settings and which languages user routinely use for their posts.

The social network plans to use multilingual posts to improve machine translation capabilities with the aim of one day removing language barriers across the social network.

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Facebook integrates SMS to Messenger for Android

 

Facebook has a track record of giving the boot to the old way of doing things, but the social media giant made an announcement yesterday that was less a death knell to old tech and more an arm ’round the shoulder of a much-cherished relic of yore: SMS.

The company started testing the feature back in February, but Facebook Messenger users on Android can now access all their personal Facebook and SMS messages in a single app. This flies in the face of pronouncements Facebook has made in the past about the benefits of mobile messaging apps over text messaging — why it paid around $20 billion to acquire WhatsApp and why it forced Facebook users to download the separate Messenger app if they want to access messages from friends and family.

How it works

To set Facebook Messenger as your default SMS app, you simply head to Settings within the app, select “SMS” from the menu, and activate “Default SMS app.”  Going forward, your SMS chats will appear in purple, and Messenger chats in blue. The feature isn’t available to iOS users, because Apple restricts access to SMS for third-party app makers.

So why has Facebook now decided to embrace SMS?

The answer is simply that Facebook wants you using the Facebook Messenger app as much as possible, except it knows there are still countless people not using the service.
Facebook Messenger has more than 900 million users, but basic feature phones are still prevalent in many markets and some demographics, including older generations, still aren’t on the service. This means that those who do use Facebook Messenger have to switch between two apps to communicate.

The bigger picture

By opening up to SMS, Facebook is making it slightly more convenient to communicate with everyone you know. But that shouldn’t distract you from Facebook’s broader mission of creating a siloed internet offshoot through which it controls everything that’s going on in your digital lives.


Facebook Messenger is already becoming a mini version of the internet — a place where companies and consumers interact and online media outlets are encouraged to publish directly to Facebook using Instant Articles. YouTube is now a second-class citizen to Facebook’s own video offering.
In short, Facebook wants to steer you away from the web and into its own gargantuan networking ecosystem.
David Marcus, VP of messaging products, gave some notable insights into the company’s thinking around old communication vehicles in this statement back in January [emphasis ours]:

SMS and texting came to the fore in the time of flip phones. Now, many of us can do so much more on our phones; we went from just making phone calls and sending basic text-only messages to having computers in our pockets. And just like the flip phone is disappearing, old communication styles are disappearing too.

With Messenger, we offer all the things that made texting so popular, but also so much more. Yes, you can send text messages, but you can also send stickers, photos, videos, voice clips, GIFs, your location, and money to people. You can make video and voice calls while at the same time not needing to know someone’s phone number. You don’t need to have a Facebook account to use Messenger anymore, and it’s also a cross-platform experience – so you can pick up where you left off whether you’re on a desktop computer, a tablet, or your phone.

It’s true that mobile messaging apps allow more options than SMS currently does, but there are reasons SMS is still going strong. Marcus calls Messenger a “cross-platform” experience — which it is, you can access it on any device. But it’s not cross-platform in the sense that you can send messages to those using other messaging apps. With SMS, you can send messages to anyone with a mobile phone number, even if their messaging service of choice is Telegram or Viber. Also, SMS is delivered across a cellular network that is often available where mobile internet isn’t, or where mobile internet is prohibitively expensive (e.g. abroad).

Let’s be clear about one thing: Facebook doesn’t like phone numbers, and it doesn’t like SMS. But it also acknowledges that they’re both necessary evils for now, which is why it is embracing text messaging. Its priority is to get your attention focused entirely on the world of Facebook.

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Facebook is making the Messanger App compulsory for Android users

 

It's been roughly two years since Facebook decided to strip the chat functionality from their smartphone app. Instead of letting users just download a single app for all of their Facebooking tasks, the company forced users to install a new app to chat, called Messenger. Of course, you could get around that by choosing to go to the mobile Facebook page and chatting there. But even that is coming to an end.


There are a lot of reasons why users might not want to install Facebook's Messenger app. It can be a drain on your battery, and it requests permissions for things like your microphone, which makes some people uneasy. Unfortunately, the company is trying their hardest to make sure that's your only option for using their chat service on your phone.

Android users are already getting notifications saying "Soon you'll only be able to view your messages from Messenger." And we've gotten reports that some Android users are already completely unable to send messages through the chat function. When they try to open a conversation, they're being directed to the Messenger listing on the Google Play Store.

Currently, iOS users still seem to be able to send messages through the mobile site, but it's only a matter of time before they're given the same treatment. There are currently only a couple of workarounds for this issue. You can either browse the desktop version of the site on your phone, or use a third-party app like Trillian to handle your messages.


Source: Slash Gear

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Facebook partners with Airtel Africa to launch Internet.org Free Basics in Nigeria

 


Free Basics provides basic mobile websites and services for free to people around the world, providing them with an onramp to the internet and demonstrating the value the internet can provide.

Free Basics will launch in Nigeria with more than 85 free services dedicated to health, education, jobs, and finance.

To date, Free Basics, have brought more than 25 million people online who wouldn’t be otherwise. More than half of the 40 Free Basics countries are in Africa.

In November at AfricaCom, Airtel announced that it planned to launch Free Basics in all of its African markets, including Nigeria. You can read that announcement here.




Mark Zuckeberg posted about the launch in Nigeria : you can read more here.

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