How To Clear Suggested Calls On Messenger

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Chances are that if you use Facebook today (and those chances are high because Facebook just passed over 2.6 billion monthly active users), you have heard all the hype about the Facebook Messenger App and concerns over Facebook Messenger privacy.

To start off the whole fiasco in 2014, users were forced to download the separate Facebook Messenger App if they wanted to use messaging through the Facebook app itself for mobile. This started causing Facebook users to be leary.

Why? Because the Facebook Messenger app asked for access to a lot more permissions than the average app and, let's be honest, the permissions are a little frightening when you start looking into them (more on that below).

Then, in early 2018, the Facebook-Cambridge Analytical data scandal happened which exposed the fact that millions of Facebook users' personal data was being harvested without their consent by Cambridge Analytica. This led to the #DeleteFacebook movement which trended on Twitter.

Needless to say, Facebook users have been worried about their privacy for a long time now, and for good reason.

If you have questions about Facebook Messenger when it comes to your privacy, then you're in the right place.

We have answers. Use the guide below to jump around as you need:

Are Messages On Messenger Private?
Is Facebook Messenger Secure?
Can Anybody See Your Messages On Messenger?
How Do I Start Secret Conversations On Messenger?
Facebook and Facebook Messenger App Permissions
Why Does Facebook Need These Permissions?
Is Facebook the Only App With These "Invasive" Permissions?
Should You Be Worried About Your Privacy With the Facebook Messenger App Or Not?
What Are Good Alternatives to Facebook Messenger?

Are Messages On Messenger Private?

NO. Unless you are using Secret Conversations (explained below), your messages on Facebook Messenger are not private.

Messages that are sent through the Facebook Messenger app are NOT end-to-end encrypted. This means that any message you send on Messenger could be seen or intercepted in plain text.

If you truly care about your privacy, you would never use a messaging app that is not end-to-end encrypted by default such as Facebook Messenger.

What does end-to-end encryption mean? Glad you asked! In super simple terms, if you send a message from your phone that says "Hi Mark" and the message is encrypted, it gets sent as a bunch of jumbled letters and numbers before it reaches Mark's phone.

This means that if your "Hi Mark" message was intercepted by anyone, it would look something like this: TUVm6HIrSJjhNU9x8gIaWJF4KtK3I5TYaSDdaxcDlrI=

That way, nobody (including hackers) would be able to know what the message is saying.

However, since the Facebook Messenger app does not encrypt your messages by default, all of your pictures and messages you send can be seen by Facebook.

In fact, Facebook confirmed it uses technology to spy on your Facebook messages and pictures. Even though these messages aren't always seen by an actual person, that's still a very shady business decision and the exact opposite of "privacy."

Sounds pretty scary, doesn't it? Yet millions of users continue to use Facebook Messenger on a daily basis.

Is Facebook Messenger Secure?

NO. Facebook Messenger is only "secure" if you are using their Secret Conversations feature.

In 2016, Facebook announced a new feature offering encrypted, secret, self-destructing Messenger chats called Secret Conversations.

Even though Secret Conversations have been a feature that Facebook Messenger has offered since 2016, many users today don't even know the feature exists.

In March of 2019, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, posted a note on Facebook called "A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking" in which he outlines the company's visions to work towards building a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform through Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (all platforms owned by Facebook).

In the article, Mark Zuckerberg writes, "I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever."

This would include end-to-end encryption on all Facebook-owned messaging services. It should be noted that WhatsApp already has end-to-end encryption built into the app by default (good news!).

All of that being said, Facebook's messaging platforms aren't even close to being fully encrypted and they have said that encrypting Messenger will take years.

Can Anybody See Your Messages On Messenger?

Technically, YES. Since your messages are not end-to-end encrypted, that means that Facebook, law enforcement, hackers, over-reaching governments, or anyone who knew what they were doing could potentially read your messages.

Now, this doesn't mean that your friends or family members would be able to read your messages. They would only be able to read them if they had your username and password and were signed into your account.

However, your Facebook Messenger messages are stored on Facebook's servers word for word. So, if Facebook really wanted to, they could view all your messages or, in some cases, would have to hand your messages over to law enforcement or the government.

If Facebook's servers or your own Facebook account was ever hacked, your messages and pictures you've sent could potentially all be retrieved as well.

How Do I Start Secret Conversations On Messenger?

If you want to use Secret Conversations on Facebook Messenger (which offer end-to-end encryption), you have to first enable Secret Conversations on your account.

Follow the steps below to enable Secret Conversations on Facebook Messenger for both Android and iOS:

Open Facebook Messenger
Tap on your Profile Picture in the upper-left
Scroll down and tap on Secret Conversations
Make sure the Secret Conversations toggle is turned ON

Once Secret Conversations are enabled, then you can go and actually use them.

Follow the steps below to start a Secret Conversation on Facebook Messenger for Android:

Open Facebook Messenger
Tap on the Pencil icon in the upper-right
Make sure the Padlock toggle is turned ON
Choose the person you want to start a Secret Conversation with

Follow the steps below to start a Secret Conversation on Facebook Messenger for iOS:

Open Facebook Messenger
Tap on the Pencil icon in the upper-right
Tap on Secret in the upper-right
Choose the person you want to start a Secret Conversation with

For more information, see the Facebook Secret Conversations help article.

Read: Password Security – Why Secure Passwords Need Length Over Complexity

Facebook and Facebook Messenger App Permissions

As far as Facebook and Facebook Messenger App permissions go, there has been a lot of speculation ever since 2014 when users were forced to download the separate Facebook Messenger app in order to use messaging on mobile.

Facebook users have been concerned about how Facebook is using these permissions to their advantage to send personalized advertisements and make money off of them.

Well, we went and started looking into the Facebook and Facebook Messenger permissions and have presented our findings below.

First of all:

If you have the regular Facebook App downloaded, you already have agreed to nearly all the permissions that the Facebook Messenger App requests!

Yes, you heard that correctly. The regular Facebook app (not the Messenger app) uses nearly all the same permissions as the Messenger app does.

Don't believe us? Here's an list of the Facebook and Facebook Messenger permissions side-by-side:

As of Facebook version 265.0.0.61.103 and Facebook Messenger version 259.0.0.18.120

In the above pictures, you'll see screenshots of the Facebook app and the Messenger app's permissions. After reading through them, some of them stand out as being pretty scary if you've never looked into these before (some are listed below).

Facebook Messenger App Permissions Examples:

directly call phone numbers
receive and read your text messages (SMS or MMS)
take pictures and videos
record audio
change network connectivity
download files without notification
read the contents of your shared storage

Facebook App Permissions Examples:

read your text messages (SMS or MMS)
take pictures and videos
record audio
change network connectivity
download files without notification
access location in the background

Notice that many of the permissions are the same, and the two apps request nearly identical permissions (with a few differences). After all, you are able to call people directly using the Facebook Messenger app which explains why it has a few differences from the regular Facebook app such as permission to directly call phone numbers.

Why Does Facebook Need These Permissions?

Well, Facebook has some pages in their Help Center to explain to users what the permissions are used for. The pages have an explanation for both the regular Facebook App and the Facebook Messenger App.

See these links:

Messenger App Help Page – Why is the Messenger app requesting permission to access features on my Android phone or tablet?
Facebook App Help Page – Why is the Facebook app requesting permission to access features on my Android?

Some examples Facebook provides as to why they need those permissions (can also be found in the links above):

Read your text messages (SMS or MMS) – If you add a phone number to your account, this allows us to confirm your phone number automatically by finding the confirmation code that we send via text message.
Take pictures and video – This permission allows you to take photos and videos within the Messenger app to easily send to your friends and other contacts.
Record audio – This permission allows you to send voice messages, make free voice calls, and send videos within Messenger.
Directly call phone numbers – This permission allows you to call a Messenger contact by tapping on the person's phone number, found in a menu within your message thread with the person.
Read calendar events plus confidential information – This allows the app to show your calendar availability (based on your phone's calendar) when you're viewing an event on Facebook.

Another thing that is important to note — An application needs permissions in order to get its features to work. I have even developed some basic Android apps in the past for fun that required some of these permissions.

For example, if there is a button within your application that allows the user to take a picture or video, the developer needs to require permission to take pictures and videos along with the permission to record audio . Otherwise, that button is useless because it won't do anything. Simple as that.

Is Facebook the Only App With These "Invasive" Permissions?

Absolutely not. This is something that you would think is common sense, but apparently it's not. There are plenty of other apps out there that use many of these same permissions.

Here is a list of most of the "invasive" permissions listed above that the Facebook and Messenger App use along with other popular apps that use those same permissions:

directly call phone numbers
- Also used by:
  - AVG AntiVirus Security – 100,000,000+ downloads
  - Skype – 500,000,000+ downloads
receive, read, and edit your text messages (SMS or MMS)
- Also used by:
  - AVG AntiVirus Security (all of them) – 100,000,000+ downloads
  - WhatsApp Messenger (only receive and send SMS messages) – 1 billion+ downloads
  - Skype (only receive SMS and read SMS/MMS) – 500,000,000+ downloads
  - Snapchat (only receive SMS) – 500,000,000+ downloads
take pictures and videos
- Also used by:
  - AVG AntiVirus Security – 100,000,000+ downloads
  - WhatsApp Messenger – 1 billion+ downloads
  - Skype – 500,000,000+ downloads
  - Instagram – 1 billion+ downloads
  - Snapchat – 500,000,000+ downloads
record audio
- Also used by:
  - WhatsApp Messenger – 1 billion+ downloads
  - Skype – 500,000,000+ downloads
  - Instagram – 1 billion+ downloads
  - Snapchat – 500,000,000+ downloads

With all of that new information, it's still a matter of how the company decides to use those permissions.

For example, if a company such as Facebook has as much data as they do, there are a lot of bad things they could do with that data.

Data is precious. Companies will pay absurd amounts of money for Facebook to sell it to them so that they can advertise to you. Plus, knowing Facebook's extremely shady past, can you trust Facebook? We don't.

Should You Be Worried About Your Privacy With the Facebook Messenger App Or Not?

The answer is ABSOLUTELY YES you should be worried!

Facebook is not even close to having end-to-end encryption by default on all of the apps they own (Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp). The only Facebook-owned app that has end-to-end encryption by default right now is WhatsApp, so if you HAVE to use one, we would highly suggest using WhatsApp.

Between the Facebook-Cambridge Analytical data scandal, Facebook admitting that they use technology to spy on your messages and pictures, Facebook blatantly suppressing certain topics on their platforms, and so much more, it's no wonder that no one trusts Facebook.

Facebook is using the information they gather about each individual user so that they can sell that information to third-party companies. This is how Facebook monetizes the data they receive. Without it, they wouldn't be in business.

Not sure how your data is used? You can poke through the various categories on the Facebook Data Use Policy page.

The part we should be even more worried about is the fact that, regardless of any permission that any app could ever ask us, much of online Internet data (whether that be Facebook chats, websites visited, pictures sent, etc.) goes directly to the NSA because apparently we all need to be tracked. But that's a whole other conversation…

What Are Good Alternatives to Facebook Messenger?

Use Signal.

Happy messaging!

Jake is the founder of Crambler. He is a fully-remote software engineer by day and a guitar-wielding musician by night with a burning passion for technology, entrepreneurship, and music.