Facebook New Messages & Digital Evidence: Looking on the Bright Side
For the fourth instalment in our series analysing Facebook’s new messaging system we want to look at some of the positive points of “New Messages” as digital evidence. For the background to this post you might like to read our introduction to New Messages; a summary of the main changes in the new system; and our notes on some of the digital evidence downsides.
Although we have mainly discussed negative aspects of Facebook Messages, for example the risks introduced by the Facebook.com webmail system, there are aspects of New Messages which will be very helpful in using Facebook Messages as evidence.
Cernam Seminar: Facebook’s New Messages & Digital Evidence
Special seminar in Dublin on Facebook’s upgraded messages system
Facebook is one of the most popular electronic messaging systems in the world, with close to 700 million users exchanging over 4 billion messages each day. In December of last year Facebook announced an upgrade to Messages and this improved feature is now being made available to users outside of the US.
New Messages fundamentally changes the nature of Facebook Messages and the associated risks. Did you know for example that Facebook users can now exchange Office documents and other attachments via New Messages? Or that switching to New Messages provides a Facebook.com email address which can be used to send and receive emails outside of Facebook? Read more
Breaking the Bad News: Facebook’s New Messages & E-Discovery
This is the third in our series of posts on Facebook’s updated messages system. In our two previous articles we introduced New Messages and discussed the main changes which it introduces. In this post we will look at the emails generated by New Messages and the difficulties which will arise in relation to electronic discovery.
A radically different view of email
Facebook users who are switched to the new Messages system will receive a Facebook.com email address based on their choice of Facebook username, for example a username of MarkZ would give an email address of MarkZ@Facebook.com. New Messages will generate email messages when a user communicates with another Facebook user who is offline and when an email address is entered as the recipient of a Facebook message. Facebook users can also receive external emails via their Facebook.com email address, with emails being delivered to the Facebook messages inbox. Read more
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.
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Facebook’s New Messages System in the Wild – First Observations
Six months after its initial launch Facebook is now rolling out the new Facebook Messages system to users in Ireland, the UK and other parts of the world. Although Facebook often do not announce new feature rollouts it is clear from searching Twitter or Facebook that many users have recently been switched over to the new system. A search using Google Real Time shows a clear peak in discussion of “new Facebook messages” within the last month, beginning at the end of April and continuing throughout May.
Internally, new Facebook Messages was known as Project Titan but it has also been unofficially titled “the Gmail killer”. Commenting on the new system Mark Zuckerberg has said “This is not an email killer. This is a messaging experience that includes email as one part of it”. However, he has also said that “Facebook’s system fundamentally alters the way people communicate” and in this he is correct. Email is becoming more about identity and for a lot of people, their Facebook network defines their online identity. Back in November, Facebook released some shocking statistics on the use of their previous messaging system, specifically that 350 million Facebook users were using the system and were generating a total of 4 billion messages (including Facebook chat messages) each day. To put this level of adoption and usage into perspective, the three main webmail providers (Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail) have around 800 million users between them. Facebook’s new system therefore changes the way that 350 million people communicate in both their personal and professional lives.
