Like it or not, Facebook Messenger can be inevitable, especially if your friends and family have decided on the app as their main messaging service. I know people who just kept Facebook accounts to continue using Messenger. But even if you are all with Facebook without any worries, there are some Messenger features to know to get the most out of the service while also protecting your privacy.
If you do not want people to see if you’re online – and how long it’s been since you last logged in – just tap your profile picture in the top left of the Messenger app and select Active status to eliminate it. These profile settings are also where you can activate Dark mode, which gives your eyes a break while you chat.
From Settings you can customize who can send the message to you. Type Privacy and then Delivery of messages to allow all your Facebook friends to send you a message, just friends with your phone number, etc. Under Preferences, choose Telephone contacts and enable Messenger’s ability to drag everyone into your phonebook’s address book. This prevents Facebook from having information about people who may not want the business to know anything about them, and is also a good practice in general.
If you want to make Messenger even more private, you can enable end-to-end encryption and disappearance messaging by tapping and selecting a contact’s name in a chat Turn on secret conversations. If you incite a conversation, it will be possible Disappear mode which will not encrypt your messages, but will make them disappear when you leave the conversation. You will still receive a notification when you contact the messages in the Vanish mode (or vice versa) screenshot, so if it has to be said: do not use it to be creepy.