Facebook disables previously used PGP-encrypted email, a feature once favored by a niche group of tech enthusiasts

In 2015, as part of a wave to encrypt everything on the internet encouraged by the Edward Snowden revelations, Facebook announced: Allows users to receive encrypted emails from your company..

Even back then, this was a feature for paranoid users. When you turn on this feature, all emails sent by Facebook to users who opt in (primarily like notifications and private messages) will be sent using a decades-old technology called Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). Encrypted.

After eight years, Facebook has discontinued the feature due to low usage, the company said. This feature was retired on Tuesday.

Facebook declined to reveal exactly how many users are still using the encrypted email feature. It’s not hard to believe that no one was actually using it. I love encryption, but deprecating this feature makes a lot of sense.

First, you can turn off email notifications completely. The reason is simply that email notifications appear in the Facebook app or browser. Why would he want to get two notifications that a friend tagged you in a photo from a party where you were drunk without asking for permission?

For example, I was using the email encryption feature at the time, but since then I also turned off email notifications, so that feature was useless.

Also, who will be using PGP in the year of the Lord 2023? Even the inventor of PGP, the esteemed cryptologist Phil Zimmerman, has said that he does not use PGP Back in 2015.

“Ironically, I haven’t lost.” Zimmerman told me in an email at the time:.

Zimmerman said the main reason he didn’t use PGP since Symantec acquired PGP in 2010 to incorporate PGP technology into its products was because he couldn’t run the necessary encryption software on his MacBook. He said it was true. Zimmerman also said that “there was no version of his PGP that worked on iOS devices.” (It’s worth noting that you can encrypt email and files on your Mac. GPG Toolsafter its acquisition by Symantec, served as the de facto replacement for PGP (if you want to inflict that kind of pain on yourself).

I’m still using PGP very sometimes.If you want to annoy me, you can use my PGP public key Send an encrypted message. It will be much easier to read and respond if you send it on Signal or WhatsApp instead.

Rest in Peace, Facebook Email Encryption. I never really get lonely.