Facebook has launched a version of its website specifically for Tor, allowing users of Tor to access a stable version of Facebook.
The new site is only accessible for Tor users and bounces users' connections through three extra layers of encryption.
"Facebook's onion address provides a way to access Facebook through Tor without losing the cryptographic protections provided by the Tor cloud," said Alec Muffett, a software engineer with Facebook's infrastructure group. "It provides end-to-end communication, from your browser directly into a Facebook datacenter."
The website can be found at https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/ , and its launch comes as s surprise considering the social media giants history in privacy.
Facebook is the first with a Certificate Authority to launch a Tor URL, which puts the company head and shoulders above many other social media networks when it comes to online security. This is a great move for Facebook, who is in many people's eyes a pioneer of breaking down online privacy.
Facebook has been receiving complaints for years from users of Tor, saying that the website does not work properly with Tor. Fonts, for example, looked terrible and ads were misplaced.
It's important to note that using the Tor network with the new Facebook site will not hide a users identity from Facebook itself.
"No, you're not anonymous to Facebook when you log in, but this provides a huge benefit for users who want security and privacy," said Runa Sandvik, former Tor developer who advised Facebook in the project. "You get around the censorship and local adversarial surveillance, and it adds another layer of security on top of your connection."
Tor itself is designed for many different purposes, one of them being to circumvent censorship and surveillance that occurs close to the users connection, such as in regimes like Iran or China. Because of the fact that Facebook uses SSL encryption, no surveillance system should be able to match up a users identity with their Facebook profile if that user is using Tor.
"Tor challenges some assumptions of Facebook's security mechanisms-for example its design means that from the perspective of our systems a person who appears to be connecting from Australia at one moment may the next appear to be in Sweden or Canada," continued Muffet. "Considerations like these have not always been reflected in Facebook's security infrastructure, which has sometimes led to unnecessary hurdles for people who connect to Facebook using Tor."
Over the past few years many major websites have begun using SSL encryption to protect users. Many suggest that the move by Facebook suggest that Tor may be employed by many Silicon Valley companies to provide the next layer of protection.
