Chat encryption app, Crypter, that seemed to offer a secure way to communicate with your Facebook friends has effectively depreciated in functionality after Facebook made changes to its platform to prevent the app from working.

Available as an extension for Chrome and Firefox, Crypter’s purpose was to encrypt your Facebook messages as a user is typing them. Created by Sussex University student Max Mitchell, the app was designed to let you and your Facebook friends put your messages into a cipher with an agreed-upon password. Once the correct password had been entered, Crypter users could decode the content of conversation.

This is how encrypted messages appeared before Facebook’s adjustments.

In light of recent mass spying revelations, Crypter adopts an ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ approach and – for this reason – the app was built specifically for Facebook, ‘[i]nstead of inviting users to join a brand new chat application.’

Since the changes Facebook implemented to stop the encryption app from working, the Crypter team assures us that they are ‘working extremely hard on another way around.’

➤ Crypter [via TechCrunch]

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