Messaging

Every message and photo you send has a chance to become publicly available. Don't write anything you'd regret and learn how to decrease that chance.

0 out of 9 (0%) complete, 0 ignored

Done?	Advice	Level	Details
Ignore	Use End-to-End Encrypted (E2EE) messengers	Essential	End-to-end encryption ensures that messages are encrypted on your device and remain encrypted until they reach the intended recipient. This guarantees that any intercepted traffic cannot be read by unauthorized parties, including those with access to the servers where the conversation data is stored.
Ignore	Use Open Source messengers	Essential	If the code is open source then it can be independently examined and audited by anyone qualified to do so, to ensure that there are no backdoors, vulnerabilities, or other security issues. Most popular projects will publish results of such reviews.
Ignore	Use "trustworthy" messengers	Essential	When selecting an encrypted messaging app, ensure its server is open source, stable, actively maintained, and ideally backed by reputable developers. Some good options in 2025 are Matrix, which has many clients available, all based on a secure open source protocol, Signal, and Jami. Tox and Session don't even have a centralized server.
Ignore	Check security settings	Essential	Go through the security and privacy settings in your messenger, including contact verification, security notifications, and encryption. Disable optional privacy-leaking features such as read receipts, last online, and typing notifications.
Ignore	Secure group chats	Essential	Don't use Telegram: every group chat in it is plain text unencrypted, just waiting to leak. For encrypted groups in Matrix/Signal/Tox, the risk of compromise rises the more participants are in a group. Periodically check that all members should still be there.
Ignore	Understand media metadata	Essential	Metadata is additional information attached to media. When you send a photo, audio recording, video, or document you may be revealing more than you intended to: date, location, information identifying you or device may be included with it.
Ignore	Verify your correspondent	Optional	Prior to any financial transaction initiated in messenger it's always good to ensure you are talking to the intended recipient, and that they have not been compromised. Make a call, find another contact through friends or colleagues.
Ignore	Enable self-destructing messages	Optional	Self-destructing messages is a feature that causes your messages to automatically delete after a set amount of time. Together with encryption this means that if your device is lost, stolen, or seized, an adversary will only have access to the most recent communications.
Ignore	Avoid SMS	Optional	SMS is not secure. It is susceptible to threats such as interception, SIM swapping, SIM porting, and smartphone malware. It's ok to SMS "Message me on Matrix: https://matrix.to/".