New Facebook Messages: Top 5 things you need to know

In our last post we introduced Facebook’s new Messages system and outlined some of the changes. This recent upgrade fundamentally changes the nature of Facebook Messages and therefore breaks many widely-held assumptions about the limitations of Facebook as a messaging platform. In this post we will therefore highlight 5 of the most important features for anyone interested in Facebook Messages as evidence, for example in litigation or employment matters.

1. Facebook is now a webmail system

Our first key point regarding “New Messages” is that messages are no longer restricted to Facebook users and in fact the new features effectively make Facebook a webmail system.

As we noted yesterday the 3 largest webmail providers (Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail) have around 800 million users - that’s 800 million combined, with the largest being Hotmail at around 360 million users. Comparing this to Facebook’s almost 700 million users makes it easy to see the potential impact of Facebook Messages which is already being actively used by 350 million users. If a majority of the existing Messages users adopt the Facebook.com email addresses provided by the new system, Facebook will become one of the world’s largest webmail providers. For this reason New Messages has been called “the Gmail killer”, however Facebook position the product as “next generation messaging” rather than directly competing with Gmail, Hotmail etc.

Within New Messages users will see all of their online interactions with friends integrated in a single mailbox, complete with a history of past interactions. By combining chat, email and SMS text messages Facebook could become the hub of online communication, particularly for those who already use Facebook throughout their day and from multiple devices. Facebook’s strategy in this regard is clear: extra features result in extra minutes per day of Facebook activity and therefore additional advertising revenue.

If New Messages proves popular it could lead certain users to gradually shift their traditional email interactions away from their current email system. More importantly, if Facebook proceed with their plans to introduce IMAP access it would be possible to access Facebook from mobile devices, from other webmail accounts or from email clients such as Outlook and Apple Mail. In this scenario it is very likely that usage of Facebook email would overtake that of legacy email accounts and eventually lead to some users retiring their Gmail or Hotmail accounts.

The implications of widespread Facebook email use would mirror the issues seen with personal web-based email accounts: employees forwarding business records to their personal address; interactions with colleagues shifting away from corporate systems; and eventually business correspondence being sent via personal accounts. In essence corporate email systems are already in competition with services such as Gmail or Hotmail and for many users the simplified minimal nature of Messages may be compelling, particularly given the strong support for mobile devices. As well as business records we can also be confident that government records and correspondence will be found within Facebook messages, as has been seen with personal webmail accounts in high-profile cases such as that of Senator John Ensign and locally here in Ireland where a government minister conducted government business via personal email.

2. Facebook now supports attachments

Up to now Facebook has not provided a way to exchange attachments, either through Facebook Messages or Chat. A user could point to documents hosted elsewhere via links but it was not possible to upload a document and transfer or view it via Facebook. With this upgrade Facebook users can now send attachments via New Messages, both internally within Facebook and externally via Facebook.com email.

Office documents such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint can be downloaded for editing or viewed directly through Office.com without the need for Office software. The use of Office.com is notable as Facebook had previously partnered with Microsoft on an equivalent but separate system, “Docs for Facebook”, which allowed users to create and share documents. The two systems are entirely separate, meaning Docs.com users will not automatically have their files transferred to Office.com.

The ability to exchange attachments greatly increases the risk that business documents will be stored within Facebook accounts, particularly with the strong features around Office documents which may lead employees to upload or email files in order to view them on a mobile device or a system without Office.

3. Facebook conversations are now logged by default

Prior to New Messages Facebook chat messages were not logged, unlike other instant messaging systems where logging can be turned on or off at the users discretion. The new Messages system integrates email, Facebook messages, Facebook chat and cellphone text messages into one social inbox with a complete record of all interactions with each contact. As a consequence Facebook is now logging chat contents by default so that they can be stored and displayed alongside messages, emails and other interactions. This greatly expands the universe of information available as evidence and brings in a far more informal communication channel which could prove valuable in litigation.

Another interesting aspect of the chat logging is the ability to add new people to an existing conversation, even if that conversation had been started by another person. After adding a new participant that person can view all of the previous messages in the conversation. This feature could be a straightforward way to provide attorneys or investigators with access to past content. In recent months we have seen several social media cases where judges or counsel have asked  parties to “friend” them on Facebook so that they can review relevant information. With New Messages this may no longer be necessary since there is no need to friend the target to view all of the previous interactions.

Finally on this issue, we have seen instances of Facebook chat conversations appearing in the New Messages system where the chat conversation occurred many months ago, prior to the introduction of New Messages. This suggests that although Facebook did not expose chat logs at that time, chat logs were being created and are now being exposed via the new interface.

4. Facebook’s “Data Download” tool is dangerously incomplete

Back in October 2010 Facebook began rolling out a new feature which allowed users to download their Facebook information. This data download tool is advertised as providing an export of all information shared via Facebook, with the data being downloaded in the form of a zip file. The download includes photo albums, events, friends, wall content, profile information and messages. Several commentators have suggested the use of this data download tool for e-discovery purposes and have suggested that this is one of the intended purposes of the tool.

Based on previous analysis we have significant concerns as to the use of this tool for e-discovery or other evidential purposes and we hope to publish details of this analysis later this month. For now however we will look briefly at the interaction of New Messages and the data download tool: in essence the news is not good, it appears that Facebook have not updated the download to work alongside the new messaging system.

With the messaging system now integrating 4 types of communication in one place you might expect that all of those communications would appear in the download. However, in our testing we have seen only one of these categories of data in the zip file: the traditional old-style Facebook Messages. Facebook emails, text messages and logged chat conversations are ignored and are not present in the download.

The image above is the profile view of a conversation between two Facebook friends. It is a mixture of Facebook Messages and Facebook Chat.	You will notice that normal Facebook Messages appear in the Data Download view on the right – the Chat Messages are completely ignored. The two views are completely different.

Based on this major omission the data download tool is now dangerously incomplete and should not be considered for e-discovery or other evidential purposes. It appears Facebook may have abandoned the development of data download since there are now several major Facebook features which are completely unsupported: New Messages, the new groups system, applications, and others.

5. That “Delete” button may not do what you expect

Our final key point relates to an issue which we have not yet been able to reproduce but which is widely reported by users of New Messages: the resurrection of previously-deleted messages. Certain users who have been switched to New Messages are re-discovering messages which they had previously deleted. These messages were previously not visible in their Facebook inbox and appeared to have been entirely deleted, however the switch to New Messages has “undeleted” them and they have now re-appeared in the new inbox. The implication of this is that Facebook had implemented a “hide” feature rather than a true delete function but again this is not something we have been able to reproduce directly in our testing.

For digital evidence professionals, attorneys or others with an interest in Facebook content as evidence, this deletion issue represent a significant opportunity. It may be possible for example to prove that a user deleted certain messages, potentially destroying evidence or selectively pruning their inbox to support a particular position. For example, in the context of an on-going lawsuit it might be possible to compare current inbox contents against a listing of the same inbox prior to the switch to New Messages, identifying messages which had been deleted previously but have now re-appeared.

Next Up

The changes to Facebook Messages are so significant and have such a potential impact on digital evidence that we have much more to write about. Further posts in this series will deal with specific challenges and advantages when dealing with Facebook.com emails as evidence and will also cover other problems caused by New Messages. We would welcome comments or questions about this material via Twitter (@CernamKaren or @CernamOwen) or in the comments section below.

Facebook Messages Seminar

We know that many digital evidence and legal professionals have questions regarding New Messages and the use of Facebook content as evidence so on Tuesday June 21st we are holding a lunchtime seminar at NovaUCD to address exactly these issues. At this event we will discuss the key changes introduced by New Messages; what it looks like and how it works; the evidential challenges and opportunities; and finally the prospects for Facebook Messages in terms of widespread adoption.

For more information, check out our blog post about the seminar or register here.