Send text and voice messages or photos via Messenger – a matter of course for many. However, the apps also offer other interesting functions that users do not have on the screen.
Some are above all a fun pastime, others offer “real” added value – and provide more data security or perfect timing for messages. Sending animated graphics (GIFs) is one of the fun functions. GIFs are short, silent video clips for a few seconds. They help to loosen up some dull text conversations with a joke.
GIFs can now be sent via all common services and can also be created online. Depending on the messenger, you can find them in the menu at Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger are available, for example, in the overview of Emojis as a separate bar. Telegram and signal For example, the GIF search function is accompanied by a large number of comic-like individual images, so-called stickers.
“Telegram shines when it comes to gadgets,” says Hans-Peter Schüler from the trade magazine “c’t”. Pupil believes the app is overrated in terms of security: “End-to-end encryption – now even with WhatsApp Standard – must be selected explicitly with Telegram.” To do this, go to “New Secret Chat” under “New Message”.
End-to-end encryption ensures that messages can only be read by the chat participants. However, it says nothing about the security of the other data.
Don’t just think about your own privacy
With almost all messengers, their access to the address book, location and memory can be restricted in the app settings of the smartphone under “Permissions”. Comfort or data security? In this case, this is often the question that everyone has to answer for himself in the end. However, one should consider that sometimes not only one’s own ideas of privacy are affected, says Hauke Mormann of the Consumer Advice Center North Rhine-Westphalia.
“Accessing a phone’s address book through messenger apps involves disclosing someone else’s data,” he explains. In this way, providers receive a large package of personal data – often not just names and numbers, but also addresses or birthdays.
Apps with a more careful user data handling such as are enjoying increasing popularity threema or signal. Threema can be used without providing any data, not even the telephone number. Signal accesses the phone book as standard: However, like Threema, the app is considered data-efficient and transparent.
Schedule messages and make them disappear
It is practical if a message can be sent with a time delay. With Telegram it is sufficient to simply press the send button longer. Then the option “Schedule message” appears. The app also has a self-deletion function. In a “secret chat” you can set a message to disappear after a certain period of time after it has been read.
Signal offers a similar function with “Disappearing Messages”. And in the beta version, Messenger also allows you to send photos and videos that destroy themselves after watching them: they not only disappear from the chat, but are also deleted from the memory of the recipient device.
But what good is self-destruction if the other person has taken a screenshot of the text or photo? The apps also offer tools for this. This is how signal screenshots can be blocked – but not protecting someone from taking a picture of their display with a camera.
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