Facebook encrypts notification emails to users with pgp

Users who choose to do so can have Facebook notification emails encrypted to their address using pgp. To do this, they must configure pgp themselves and add their public key to their Facebook account.

Users can add the pgp key to the about page of their Facebook profile, thereby enabling the ability to encrypt notification emails. They then need to prove that they can actually open the encrypted email to ensure that Facebook sends them encrypted notification emails in the future. The new functionality can be used immediately, according to Facebook’s announcement.

If a user adds a pgp key to their Facebook profile, the advantage is that other users can see the pgp key on their ‘About’ page. They can see both the fingerprint and the integral key. This only concerns the public key, which the interlocutor needs to encrypt a message.

Users must configure a pgp installation themselves and create a pgp key pair. In doing so, they must be careful not to accidentally upload the private key to Facebook; after all, with the help of that key mail can be decrypted for that user.