Facebook opens up to privacy software

Facebook wants to be more accessible to people using the privacy software Tor, in a sign of Silicon Valley’s increasing willingness to embrace new protections for users’ privacy.

The social media giant on Friday announced that it was launching a way for people on Tor, an online network that allows users to navigate the Web anonymously, to check their Facebook accounts. Facebook created a website with a “.onion” domain to allow anonymous Web servers to connect to the social network.

Users of the privacy software might have faced “unnecessary hurdles” accessing the site in the past, according to Facebook software engineer Alex Muffett.

{mosads}“It’s important to us at Facebook to provide methods for people to use our site securely,” Muffett wrote in a Facebook post.

“Facebook’s onion address provides a way to access Facebook through Tor without losing the cryptographic protections provided by the Tor cloud.”

In the wake of revelations from Edward Snowden about government surveillance of people’s online communications, many tech companies have made a concerted effort to compete over their products’ privacy protections.

Apple and Google, for instance, have recently announced major changes on new iPhone and Android devices that will automatically encrypt them to prevent anyone except the user from gaining access to notes, pictures and other files stored on the phone.

The announcement from Facebook is especially telling, since the social networking titan has often been criticized for its use of people’s data to direct advertisements.

Though Tor was originally developed by Navy researchers, it has become a focus of criticism from intelligence officials who worry that terrorists and criminals might be using the software to hide their identity.

A German public broadcaster this summer reported that the National Security Agency was targeting and tracking people using Tor, on the suspicion that they might have something to hide. 

Tor masks an Internet user’s identity by routing their Internet protocol address through a complicated series of encrypted connections. It is popular among activists and other people trying to hide their activity from the government.