Facebook now supports OpenPGP's standard elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) public keys, the company said in a Tuesday security blog.
The new encryption option will offer higher levels of security for relatively smaller key sizes, strings of code needed to lock and unlock messages, and is being widely adopted in modern cryptographic implementations.
“This new support allows you to post ECC public keys on your profile and have Facebook use them to encrypt email notifications,” the blog said.
Bill Budington Software Engineer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told SCMagazine.com the new feature will also improve encryption compatibility with Gmail and Yahoo servers once OpenPGP add-ons are released.
“A lot of people don't realize that when I send an email it goes through a dozen different servers meaning that it can be intercepted at any point down the line,” Budington said.
He said the added security of ECC cryptography helps to better ensure end-to-end encryption.
Facebook also announced in the blog that the open source end-to-end encrypted email service ProtonMail has added support for PGP encrypted Facebook emails.
Emails from the social media company now will be automatically decrypted by ProtonMail when opened in the webmail and mobile applications. Previously users had to perform a configuration process in order to decrypt the messages.
