Facebook Battles For Privacy

This past year Facebook has decided to take on some political stances in regards to privacy. Earlier this month, Facebook announced that it would now allow users to link to the social network from the Dark Web Tor Bundle Browser, or a software that is designed similarly to it’s aptly named acronym (The Onion Router), so as to layer the levels of encryption, and layer the data that informs the user’s location and identity. The effect is that whoever logs into the Tor network is completely anonymous.

Previously it was possible to access Facebook via Tor, but everyone knows that Facebook makes a new computer or device jump through hoops of security before it allows the user to log in. Of course, the purpose of Tor is to disrupt the ability to trace someone’s location. But now, Facebook can be accessed using  https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/.

That’s not all, though. Recently, the social media mega-company confirmed that the requests by governments for “Facebook's user data are up by nearly 24% to almost 35,000 in the first half of this year compared with the previous six months”, according to the BBC. Facebook insisted that they "scrutinize every government request for legal sufficiency and push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests”, the BBC reports.

All of this is taking place while Facebook is currently in a legal battle that deals with over 400 users that are accused of fraud. Facebook is currently attempting to restore their privacy rights and data, and throw out the evidence cited through Facebook. “We're aggressively pursuing an appeal to a higher court to invalidate these sweeping warrants and to force the government to return the data it has seized”, a blog post blurbed Tuesday.