Facebook Messenger is an effective and fun way of staying in touch with loved ones, whether it be over a video call, gifs and games, or just a normal chat. What we don’t want, though, is to feel unsafe and at risk of being scammed by unknowns. Messenger’s latest safety feature ensures that doesn’t happen.
Safety in the most private of spaces
Messenger aims to not only educate users on how to stay safe online, but it also wants to help detect any potentially harmful activity. To do so, the app will notify users of any suspicious activity within a chat and subsequently provide tips on how to spot it. From there, users can make the decision to take action by blocking or ignoring that contact.
Messenger can pick up on suspicious activity by recognising certain behavioural traits and signals. For example, if an adult is sending a rather large number of friend requests to under-18s, this will be picked up on.
This feature was first introduced to Android back in March and will soon roll out for all iOS users next week.
Keep the kids safe
In the past, platforms like Messenger have been used by adults to take advantage of minors, since then Messenger has introduced a limit on contacting adults with whom they are not connected with. Using intelligent machine learning, the app can recognise inappropriate activity on the part of adults with minors and consequently disable their accounts.
This new feature essentially helps children stay safe on the platform by being cautious and wary of the threats.
“It’s important to use language that empowers people to make wise decisions and think more critically about who they’re interacting with online.”
Avoid being scammed
These sort of platforms are also ideal for scammers and imposters to trick users into revealing private information or scam them. This is why the new feature also provides tips on how to spot scams or imposters on top of the already-integrated filters that rid potential spam or malware. Read about Messenger’s tips on how to avoid scams.
With Messenger being end-to-end encrypted (a system of communication where only the communicating users can read the messages), the added safety notices and tips will continue to be put in place so that users can feel at ease and know that they are able communicate in private with their friends and loved ones without any intruders listening in on conversations.
