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4 Easy Ways to Make Sure No One Can Read Your Text Messages – The New York Times

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By Max Eddy
Max Eddy is a writer who has covered privacy and security—including password managers, VPNs, security keys, and more—for over a decade.
If you don’t want your text messages read by prying eyes, you should consider locking your phone with a passcode or facial recognition. But that wouldn’t stop wireless companies, law enforcement, or hackers from reading your most mundane SMS missives—even without physical access to your phone.
Although that sounds scary, there’s some good news: Your text messages may already be secure if you use an app that offers a form of security called end-to-end encryption, or E2EE, and you can take a few extra steps to make it much harder for snoops to see your texts.
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Text messages not protected by E2EE can be read by a variety of third parties: wireless providers, law enforcement agencies, and even spies.
“You might as well think of them as postcards,” said Daniel Kahn Gillmor, senior staff technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Everybody along the path can see them.”
And that’s if the system is working as intended. In the recent Salt Typhoon attack, a long-running hacking campaign against US wireless companies allegedly carried out by China, hackers accessed customer data and the legal wiretap system used by US law enforcement. NBC reported that the attackers may have accessed call logs and voice calls.
People you send texts to can also easily forward your messages to others, and anyone with physical access to your phone—a thief, an abusive partner, law enforcement officers—can view your messages.
In some instances, such as the Salt Typhoon incident, hackers may work for state-sponsored actors or foreign governments and focus on political and intelligence targets. But personal texts aren’t necessarily secure, either.
“The idea of a stranger reading your messages, regardless of what the content of those messages is, should be off-putting to everyone,” said Thorin Klosowski, a security and privacy activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a former Wirecutter editor. “We all deserve the right to converse with friends and loved ones privately.”
Gillmor pointed out that your personal tolerance for having information exposed may not be shared by the people you’re messaging with, and two people might not agree on what qualifies as dangerous or incriminating—for instance, when the parties are discussing certain medical procedures that may be criminalized in one state but not in another.
“My data is also your data, and my privacy practices have an impact on your privacy,” Gillmor said.
The good news is, there’s an easy solution that lets you text securely: Use an app that encrypts your messages end-to-end.
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Klosowski explained that E2EE “uses math to jumble up the contents of a message so that only you and the intended recipients can read them.” With other forms of encryption, third parties can access the keys to decrypt your data and can potentially give those keys to law enforcement.
“End-to-end encrypted messaging is now table stakes for the most popular messaging apps, meaning it’s available to everyone, and everyone can and should make use of it,” said Filippo Valsorda, a cryptography engineer and independent open-source code maintainer.
Nearly all messages sent between iPhones are encrypted end-to-end. If you have an iPhone, any message that you send to another iPhone is encrypted end-to-end. Apple says that this includes videos, audio, photos, and other attachments as well. Conversations in blue bubbles are secure, while messages in green bubbles to non-iPhone devices are not.
Apple says that blue-bubble texts sent in the Messages app through its satellite connection feature, which is available only on certain iPhone models and with additional data plans, are also encrypted end-to-end.
Some messages sent between Android phones are encrypted end-to-end. Similar to the situation for iPhones, messages sent between Android devices in Google’s Messages app use E2EE, but with the additional caveat that only messages sent via RCS—a new texting technology intended to replace SMS—are encrypted. RCS messages sent to iPhones are not encrypted, but that could change someday.
If you see a little padlock icon on the send button in Google’s Messages app, your message is encrypted. You can also tap on sent messages to reveal a padlock icon indicating that the message was sent securely.
Secure messages need secure backups. Messages stored on your phone can sometimes end up in your device’s backups. Android uses your phone’s PIN or unlock code to encrypt backups, so only you can access them. iPhone backups on iCloud can potentially be accessed by Apple or law enforcement, so consider enabling Advanced Data Protection to secure your iPhone’s backup.
As described above, Apple and Google have made E2EE more widespread than ever, but their limitations mean that some of your messages aren’t encrypted. But you have other ways to make sure your texts are secure.
Use Signal or WhatsApp. Not every messaging app that claims to be secure actually is. Facebook Messenger doesn’t encrypt messages end-to-end unless you enable that option. Similarly, Telegram uses E2EE only in certain situations. We don’t recommend either of them. Many of the experts we spoke to recommended Signal or WhatsApp, both of which are free messaging apps available on most devices. Both apps encrypt their messages end-to-end using the same proven technology, the open-source Signal protocol. Signal is from a nonprofit, while WhatsApp is owned by Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram (but Meta can’t view the content of your messages).
In addition to secure texting, both Signal and WhatsApp do everything you might expect a messaging app to do, from wrangling group chats to facilitating video calls. By default, Signal does not back up your message data. That keeps your messages out of backups, but it also means you have to migrate your Signal messages from an old phone to a new one if you want to keep your full message history as you upgrade your device. WhatsApp has its own secure backup mechanism; you need to activate it from within the app.
There’s one downside: You can use Signal to send messages only to other Signal users, and only WhatsApp users can receive messages from other WhatsApp users. These apps also cannot send normal text messages, so you still need to use a separate app to communicate with people who don’t use Signal or WhatsApp.
Learn to tell when your messages are encrypted. If you use an iPhone, any message that appears in a blue bubble is encrypted end-to-end. On Android devices with Google’s Messenger app, look for a lock icon on the send button or under sent messages. If your messages aren’t encrypted, consider using a different app to chat.
Use self-deleting messages. Messages stored on your phone could be read or stolen, so consider setting your device to automatically delete older messages.
On iPhones, go to Settings > Apps > Messages > Message History to select how long messages stay on your phone. We were unable to find a similar feature in Google Messages. Signal and WhatsApp each let you set different timelines for message storage overall or by conversation. You can also set individual messages to be read only once before being deleted.
Keep your phone up-to-date. The messages on your phone are only as safe as your phone is. Be sure to install security updates and enable anti-theft features for your iPhone or Android device to keep thieves locked out.
The face and fingerprint scanners that quickly log you in to a device can sometimes be tricked, so learn how to temporarily disable them. On an iPhone, press and hold the volume-up and lock buttons. When the option to power off the phone appears, press the lock button again or tap Cancel. On Pixel phones, press the lock and volume-up keys and then tap Lockdown.
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People probably aren’t intercepting your messages all the time. But encrypted messaging apps are so widely available and so easy to use that it’s simple to switch and never have to wonder about who can see what and when.
This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Signe Brewster.
Max Eddy
I write about how to get the most out of your phones and computers, whether that means keeping your photos neatly sorted or protecting yourself from scams and surveillance.
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