If you still have a Facebook account, you will automatically have a Messenger account. Whether you realize it or not, Messenger is one of the most popular apps in the world. (I only use it to sell all my personal belongings on the Marketplace, but it has other functions.) Here are the best features to activate for added privacy and convenience.
When you touch your profile photo in the upper left corner, the settings menu comes up. You can use this to activate dark mode, for those nightly messaging sessions. Also in this menu is the “Active status”, which you can turn off so that others cannot see if you are online, or see when you were last logged in.
Scroll down to “Privacy” and select “Message delivery”. This allows you to personalize who can send messages to you in the app – just your Facebook friends, anyone with your phone number, etc. You can then decide whether these messages come straight to your inbox as chats or as easy-to-ignore message requests. In the “Preferences” section, select “Phone contacts” to control the data that the application extracts from your address book.
When you are in a chat, click on the photo of the other participant and scroll down to “Go to secret conversation”. This will open a new chat that offers end-to-end encryption and messages that disappear. If you simply swipe upwards in a normal conversation, you can enable “Mode to disappear”, which will still make your messages disappear, although without the added encryption. However, be aware – Vanish mode notifies all participants if someone takes a screenshot of a chat.