Facebook Messenger: if you want to stay out of jail, add encryption

You've been warned

Have something private to share in an instant message? Think twice about that.

Want to bare your soul in a text message? Not a good idea.

Under the illusion that Facebook can’t read the direct messages you share with friends on Messenger?

Wake up, please.

I’ve been harping on this subject for years. Have strong passwords that are hard to crack, don’t ever click links in e-mails or text messages that are phishing scams looking to take over your digital life and ditto for baring your soul online, in what you thought was a private message.

This week Facebook owner Meta admitted what many people have feared. A private direct message on Messenger was anything but, and the people communicating are now looking at potential jail time for what they talked about.

When confronted with a search warrant about a Nebraska resident, Facebook handed over their user data, and local police read it, and responded with an arrest. In the Messenger chat, a mother and daughter were discussing an abortion that occurred after the 20 weeks legally allowed in the state.

Had the messages been encrypted, the young girl, now 18, wouldn’t be facing charges, per the Guardian, because Facebook wouldn’t have had access to the data. But they weren’t. There was a way to do it, but Meta makes it “opt-in,” which is absolutely insane. Wouldn’t you want all your messages to be private by default? Who would vote for the alternative?

After the news broke, Meta said it would shift to encrypted messages without opt-in soon. But this awful fact remains: the changes won’t become totally effective for quite some time. Per The Platformer newsletter: “The global rollout is expected to be completed next year.”

For now, yes, you can indeed encrypt your messages to potentially keep them out of prying eyes. Even so, if you’re a Messenger user, I would suggest you not write anything down that make you uncomfortable reading in print elsewhere. (Same goes for writing down anything that gets stored on servers from Google, Amazon or even Apple.)

That said, there are two ways to protect yourself on Messenger.

You can read detailed instructions (with photos) on the website makeuseof.com, or go with my cheat sheet. Here’s how in its most simple form:

Start a chat with someone, and swipe up from the bottom of the screen to enable Vanish Mode. But a big caveat: both you and the chatter need to have the latest version of the Messenger app for it work.

The second method is the “Secret Chat,” which you enable by clicking the new message icon at the top right of the page. You will see a grayed out lock at the top. Press it and now your chat will be (supposedly) private.

(This post was inspired by reader Christel! Thanks for the nudge.)

Streaming update

Last week we spoke about my disappointment at the news that Warner Bros. Discovery will merge it’s HBO Max streaming service of premium movies and TV shows (my favorite of all the streamers) with the reality and cooking shows of Discovery +, stuff I have no interest in. I predicted that when this happens, in 2023, surely the rates will go up.

And just to keep you up to date: Disney this week announced a rate hike on the Disney + service (you knew that was coming) from $8 monthly to $11 and a boost on Disney owned Hulu as well to $15 for the ad-free version.

Many of you wrote in last week, basically to vent about streaming, with one reader noting that Philo TV is still the best deal in streaming, $25 for most of the cable channels available, sans sports and news. Agreed. The only bad news, for me: I have no interest in watching Lifetime, Hallmark, History, OWN and the like. Do you? SlingTV has a more diverse portfolio (including CNN and MSNBC) starting at $35 monthly.

Palos Verdes!

Los Angeles is an amazing area with history (downtown and Pasadena), culture (Hollywood) and fantastic ocean beach cities (Manhattan Beach, Venice, Santa Monica, Malibu, etc.)

But if you were to come visit me, and ask me the most breathtaking place to visit in all of L.A., I’d easily throw you in the car and haul you to the Palos Verdes Peninsula, our own little Hawaii in Southern California.

On the latest episode of #PhotowalksTV, I join forces with local PV photographer Ute Reckhorn to explore the area, photographing her daughter Clara and friend Leia (pictured above) in PV’s Malaga Cove, Frog Creek Trail, Bluff Side Trail, Point Vincente and the top of the hill.

Please take a look. And if you need any tips about visiting PV, just ask away.

That’s me and Tony Prince, the skinniest person I know, at the top of the hill in Palos Verdes. Tony did his usual amazing job helping me photograph this episode.

Thanks as always for reading, watching and listening with me. I’ll be back tomorrow with a final word on the Photowalks meets Backroads series with my dad, and what I learned from the experience. Then I’m off on the next adventure, to British Columbia and the area known as the “Sunshine Coast,” which sadly, so few of my friends have ever heard of. I hope to change that soon!

The newsletter will take a late August break after tomorrow’s edition until I return in September. Hope you’ll miss me!

Jeff