How to keep your private, confidential or mortifying text messages as exclusive as possible

How you keep your text messages as close, embarrassing or hurtful as possible

Elizabeth Holmes is the latest figure to have secret messages made public in court. Here's how to put one together for use with your defense.

Private messages

Imagine that you are texting someone you love. Now imagine that you are facing a charge of fraud and that a former Walgreens official reads a secret message you received aloud in a court of law, saying in a harsh voice: "I love you too."

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This is the situation Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theanos and the current defendant, found herself in last month. Hundreds of text messages between Holmes and former Theanos president and chief operating officer Sunny Balwani have been corroborated by prosecutors, describing the years of their professional and romantic relationship. Many of the messages will be used by prosecutors to try to prove that Holmes is guilty of telephone fraud, but it is a back-and-forth that could cause an alarm (and embarrassment) to ordinary people.

If he is "on his way to the dentist my master" or "carrying an instant email and going home to my leopard" he can end up in a spreadsheet and be watched by anyone, what about our personal times?

Blood, labs and fraud: Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos is in court

Protected messages are important for people like political opponents, journalists and journalists who speak to sources. But the conversation doesn't have to fall into the hands of the government to be dangerous, and you don't have to share anything high to be in danger. In addition to being summoned by law enforcement, confidential conversations may be shared without permission on social media, on social media, and with journalists or in a public trial.

Confidential msgs

At the heart of the viral New York Times "Who's a Bad Art Friend?" The story of the gossip group discussions and emails received in the official discovery. 

In India, Bollywood celebrities have been caught red-handed when law enforcement officials use WhatsApp messages as evidence. The plans of Sen. Ted Cruz, who was fleeing his native Texas during the power outage to Cancún, Mexico, was humiliated when a member of his wife's group chatted and leaked parts of the conversation. 

And then there are expensive hacking tools that can be used by governments or private Koorganizations to access data on your phone.

Everyone can have a text message they are not proud of, a very private conversation in the community, or be directed to attend a protest. While these safety measures may be helpful, they will not make you 100 percent safe.

"Nothing makes you a ghost," said Alexis Hancock, engineering director of the non-profit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Understand where the leak occurs:

Balwani and Holmes messages are sent primarily through Apple iMessage, an end-to-end chat tool for Apple devices. 

Encryption at the end is considered the norm for secure messages but there are a few ways these conversations could end up in court that everyone should be aware of.

If someone has access to the smartphone itself and how to unlock it, they can see all the messages in your various chat apps. Sometimes law enforcement may force a person to turn on his or her phone. 

Since conversations require at least two people, one person may simply present the conversation. 

And if there are backups of conversations stored somewhere where a third party has access, either directly or by encryption key, it may end up in the hands of law enforcement or criminals.

Turn off cloud backups:

While iMessage conversations are encrypted at the end, things are a little different when you open iCloud backups. The system automatically stores all your messages in the cloud so you can move them when you set up a new device. They are still encrypted here, but Apple has the key and law enforcement can apply for direct access to the company.

Cloud backup

If you're worried, turn off iCloud backup messages and delete any previous backups. The same goes for any cloud-based backups where you can't own an encryption key. If you keep them open, you can still try to prevent sensitive messages from being saved in your account.

 Quickly delete anything after it is displayed, and since Cloud backs up almost once a day, it should not be saved (someone still has it, however). You can set your own message history to automatically delete after 30 days or one year. 

Go to Settings then Messages then Message History.

Use a Signal-like tool to automatically delete messages:

Signal is a popular secure messaging tool that uses encrypted encryption and is designed to store a small amount of metadata about your communications. But one of the most useful features is its preparation for Disappearing Messages.

There will always be a time window where they can be seen long enough to take a screenshot or copy-paste quickly, but this slows down either way if it is accessed continuously down the line. (Some apps provide temporary messaging or social media options, but that doesn't always mean they will be permanently deleted.

 For example, Instagram stories can be saved even when they are no longer public.)

Do not install it in DM:

The phrase "getting into your DMs" is really bad advice. Sex and dating chats are popular on direct messaging tools built on popular social media apps like Instagram and Twitter, but they are at a different risk.

 If someone hits your account they can see your DMs. That happened in 2020 when a Florida teenager hacked several high-profile Twitter accounts in 2020, including those of Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

 These chat tools are seldom nailed to the edges and companies like Twitter do not have an easy option to delete all previous conversations. If you are going to have a close or sweet conversation, do so with a tool on the device like Apple iMessages, Signal or WhatsApp.

Keep it secure to keep it private:

An important part of keeping your banter private is making sure your accounts and devices are secure. On any social networking site or other online tool, use multi-item authentication.

 That guarantees that anyone trying to access your accounts will need more than just your password, such as a code sent directly to your smartphone. On your own devices, be sure to lock them all with passwords or passwords.

 Many modern cell phones also offer face recognition (the camera verifies your face and unlocks the device) and fingerprint detection as unlocking options, but do not use this if you have concerns about police accessing your device, say in protest. 

Finally, install software updates as soon as they become available. These may contain content that is not used by third parties.

Fingerprints and face scanning are the future of smartphones. These holdouts refused to use them.

Watch group chat (and people in general)

A weak link is usually not a piece of technology or a passcode, but a normal person. Well, we are the worst kind. No matter what settings you open, if someone else captures your messages they can live forever. 

This risk of leaks is exacerbated in group discussions, as Cruz found out, because there are already a lot of people and high chances that at least one of them doesn’t like you. The bigger the conversation, the greater the risk.

Some places you can say things that you should not say

Slack is a workplace communication tool that has risen sharply in popularity during the epidemic.

 Your account is managed and managed by your employer, who may access your direct messages or exclude group chats at any time. 

If the company is involved in a lawsuit, it can still be evidence even if your unflattering joke is only related to the problem.

Slack communication tool

Maybe you just say it in person. Or not.

At this point you probably found that no conversation was completely safe. Even if you say just a few negative things about your neighbor’s fence on WhatsApp, it’s best to work under the assumption that someone might pass it on to you, or just an old personal rumor.

Conclusion:

At the of this article it is concluded that you should keep your private and confidential messages as private as possible.

For this you can work on some above mentioned ideas,like to turn off cloud backup,use slack communication tool,use signal like tool, to automatically delete messages,don't install it in DM.

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