Your IT Consultant

Signal Private Messaging – Configure Disappearing Messages by Default

August 11, 2021

If privacy is a major concern, anything utilizing end-to-end encryption is what you are looking for. Look no further than the very popular Signal Private Messaging app. If you are like me, Signal has been installed for many years. TechCrunch reported that Signal now lets you set messages to automatically delete by default. Previously, you had to define the deletion period and activate it for each conversation.

You will need to go to the Settings for Signal to establish the default time before messages will be deleted. Once in the Settings, navigate to the Privacy section. Turn on the option for Disappearing messages. The preconfigured timers are 30 seconds, 5 minutes, 1 hour, 8 hours, 1 day, 1 week, or 4 weeks. If one of those doesn’t work for you, there is a Custom time option where you can move the timer to as low as 1 second.

Even though the timer will delete messages for the sender and receiver, it doesn’t prevent anyone from capturing the contents via an alternate means such as a photo or screenshot.

Notice: We will be transferring our blogs to a new platform shortly which will be hosted on our website. The new URL for accessing the blog will be https://senseient.com/your-it-consultant/. Users currently subscribed via email delivery or RSS should not be impacted.

Email:  Phone: 703.359.0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsimek
https://amazon.com/author/johnsimek
https://senseient.com