Hey, maybe it’s time to delete some old chat histories
If you’re concerned about possible expansion of government surveillance and access to your information, or just want to perform a digital cleanup so you’re not burdened with old data, there are a number of options concrete steps you can take to protect your digital privacy. Just as archaeologists study carefully preserved tombs and ancient trash heaps to gain insights into historic communities, your long-forgotten digital footprint could be more revealing and sensitive than you think. And while you can’t control everything — especially information stolen in security breaches or collected by data brokers — you probably have a digital attic full of old data that you can delete or download and store offline. First stop? Old news stories.
Chats are a good place to start digital decluttering. Because of their real-time nature, if you don’t have the auto-delete feature enabled for a chat (or if a platform doesn’t offer it), it’s easy to forget that everyone will be “there in 10 minutes” and “waiting.” , What color is this dress????” and “Well, I have Covid” messages are still circulating years later. If you sent them on an end-to-end encrypted platform like signal or Whatsappthey only exist on your device and the devices of the other person or people you chatted with. This means that governments or malicious actors need direct control of your device in order to read it – a good level of protection, although not foolproof.
What matters, however, are messages you sent via regular web apps like Slack or Facebook Messenger most of its historyand Google Chat/Hangouts/Gchat are on a cloud server somewhere. And while it will likely be stored in encrypted form to protect against theft, the platform itself has the keys to decrypt your data and would be able to comply with government requests regardless of how old the information is. Sure, all those “Are you there?” may not seem significant now, but years of chat histories can paint a very detailed picture of your life, your connections, your political beliefs, and your past movements and activities.
“Performing a good digital cleanup from time to time is a good habit, especially with social media and old chat messages,” says Kenn White, director of security at database developer MongoDB and director of the Open Crypto Audit Project. “Who you were five or 10 years ago is probably very different than who you are today. So it’s worth asking yourself: ‘Do I really need these inside jokes and sarcastic posts about a seven-year-old?’ Do I have to keep old group chat messages and transfer them to every new phone I get?’”
Some programs like Apple’s Messages allow you to easily delete your chat histories automatically after a set period of time. On iOS, go to Settings > Apps > News Then scroll and tap on it Keep messages. Then choose whether to keep messages forever, a year, or 30 days before automatically deleting them.
In the free version of Slack, data older than a year is automatically deleted. The company stores paid plan data forever unless the administrator is setting up rolling deletion. This is useful if you have an active Slack with your friends, but most people who use Slack at work don’t make administrative policy decisions and can’t control deletion. Keep this in mind with every communication you conduct on an employer’s platforms. You may be able to go through and delete messages or files one at a time, but you probably don’t have access to make policy decisions about automatic or batch deletion.
