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The actual number of chat messages sent each day is hard to come by, but with WhatsApp alone accounting for billions of users, you can imagine the sheer volume of ongoing conversations.

Not all of those messages involve anything particularly sensitive or private, but a lot of them doand you dont want those chats to be seen by anyone other than the intended recipients.

Good messaging hygiene might involve changing apps or tweaking a setting, but its important that you dont neglect it. These five recommendations can get you started.

Switch to End-to-End Encryption

When instant messenger chats are end-to-end encrypted, theyre essentially turned into impenetrable blocks of data. Only the devices of the person (or people) youre chatting with have the codes to unlock that data, which ensures no one else can read your messages while theyre in transit.

Not even the developers behind the software youre using can unlock that data, so if an unscrupulous employee wanted to take a peek at your chats, they wouldnt be able to. If law enforcement requested copies of the conversations, there wouldnt be anything useful to hand over to them.

Some instant messengers use end-to-end encryption, but not all of them do. End-to-end encryption is deployed by default for Signal, WhatsApp (for personal chats,) iMessage, and Google Messages (with RCS enabled.) Its also available as an option on Facebook Messenger and Telegram. If youre using anything else, check the providers policies and consider switching to something more secure.

Facebook Messenger lets you set messages to disappear.

Turn On Disappearing Messages

We mentioned that Facebook Messenger has the option of end-to-end encryption: To enable it, you need to make a conversation secret by tapping the info (i) button at the top of a chat in the mobile app, then choosing Go to secret conversation.

Once youre in that secret conversation, another feature becomes available: Disappearing messages. Tap the info button again and pick Disappearing messages, then choose how long messages should stick around after being read. This way of tidying up after yourself protects you against someone reading through your chats if they gain access to them or physical access to your device.

Facebook Messenger isnt the only app that offers this functionality: You can also find disappearing messages in WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram, among others. On iPhones, you can delete older conversations in the Messages app after choosing Messages and Keep Messages from Settings.

Lock Individual Conversations

To avoid an unwelcome visitor gaining access to your phone and all of your chats, one of the best things you can do is lock some or all of those chats behind a passcode or other locklike the protection on your phones lock screen.

WhatsApp makes this simple. You can lock the entire app via the Privacy menu in the app settings, or you can lock individual chats: Open the chat, tap the conversation name at the top of the screen, and then pick Chat lock. The options here will depend on the options on your phone (such as fingerprint lock and face recognition).

See more here:
5 Ways to Make Your Instant Messaging More Secure - WIRED