Facebook hopes to bring its online community even closer together with its new mailbox.
That new interface will now carry text messages, chats and email — all of which can be archived for eternity. But keeping all this personal data private will mean Facebook users will have to be even more responsible about protecting their accounts.
Facebook plans to slowly introduce the system over the next few months, starting in the United States.
Until now, members of the world’s largest social network have only been able to communicate within Facebook via internal mail and chats. But now messages from external sources, like text messages and email, can be received. Similarly, users can get an @facebook.com address so they can communicate outside Facebook.
Unlike its other new product introductions, Facebook has touted the increased security protocols for this new system from the start. For example, users can stipulate that emails from people who are not on their contact list get blocked.
“Instead of having to worry about your email address getting out, you’re now in control of who can actually reach you,” wrote the company on its blog.
Alongside the news — just like everywhere else on the platform — there will be personalized ads. But company head Mark Zuckerberg has promised that conversation contents will not be analyzed for targeting ads.
But bundling that much private data can bring risks.
“It’s questionable whether it’s a good idea to hand over so much information to one provider,” said Johannes Caspar, data security chief for the German city-state of Hamburg. His office oversees Facebook operations for Germany.
That bundling means that if a hacker stole a person’s password, he would have access to a wide range of information.
Facebook is already a focus for criminals. A study by software security firm Kaspersky showed that about 6 per cent of all phishing emails…