Ways to minimize your digital footprint
Gone are those days where you would use a pen and paper to communicate with someone. There are a ton of encrypted applications in the market that will fit your needs. Although, you cannot do anything when someone chooses to snoop on your messages, while your device is just lying around. If you intend your message not to be forwarded or spoken about, it will come in handy.
Your favourite applications such as whatsapp, telegram, gmail, are trying to solve this by introducing neat features such as disappearing messages, vanish mode, confidential emails.
Figuring out which application provides you with what, and how it operates, can be challenging. Here will try to list all those features introduced by our favourite messaging application.
WhatsApp's Disappearing Messages
Users can enable this feature from the chat info section for a particular chat. Once it is enabled, all the messages and media shared will be automatically deleted after a period of seven days. However, if the user forwards your message to someone else, it won't be deleted from there.
Gmail's Confidential Mode
To send someone a confidential email. Compose a new message, find the lock icon on the bottom, turn it on, choose an expiration period between one day to five years. Then draft and send.
This feature is neat. You can remove access manually anytime you want, you can password protect it, and the content shared in the email cannot be forwarded, copied, or downloaded.
Instagram's Vanish Mode
A few weeks ago, Instagram introduced vanish mode, which allows your messages to disappear from the DM entirely.
To enter vanish mode, make sure your application is updated. Head over your DM all you need to do is swipe up, and your screen will switch to black colour or in other words just like an incognito mode like your web browser.
To turn it off, all you have to do is click on "Turn Off Vanish Mode".
Telegram's Secret Chat
New secret chat - click on options, initiate a new secret chat, choose your contact, and start messaging.
The benefits of using secret chat are, telegram will not store anything on their server. The recipient won't be able to forward, screenshot or screen-record, you can also choose to self-destruct your messages which is sweet.
Conclusion
It is good to see all these applications taking measures to improve your privacy, whether in terms of encryption or by adding such features. Most of them are quite useful when you want to share something silly, and don't want anyone going through them later. For the rest you can use these features to clear up your device memory regularly, so you don't have to think about deleting chats to free up memory.
Lately because of the pandemic, everyone's prized possession is their device, and we use it to communicate for our work, friends, family, or loved ones and it recalls some kind of barrier.
It has become a natural part of our digital behaviour to share screenshots. The popularity of shared screenshots reflects our steadily eroding private sphere. These features give us control of what you want to get shared by the recipient.
The author is a Tech-enthusiast and a Blogger