Protonmail adds support for encrypted Facebook emails

The Swiss webmail service Protonmail has added support for Facebook PGP. Emails that Facebook users encrypt with pgp can therefore be opened directly in the Protonmail web client or mobile app, without plug-ins or other steps.

Until now, Facebook users who wanted to send encrypted mail had to install pgp, generate keys and use plug-ins, Protonmail writes. However, if those users use Protonmail, all they need to do is import their PGP public key to Facebook.

The method works because both Facebook and Protonmail support the open OpenPGP standard. “Any pgp message sent to a Protonmail account from any sender, whether pgp/mime or inline-pgp, can now be automatically decrypted,” Protonmail reports.

Facebook started supporting pgp in July. The goal of ProtonMail is to make encryption as easy as possible using secure implementations of aes, rsa and openpgp. The webmail service is free to use.