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There are problems that can occur with all messengers, regardless of the operating system used. These can be technical in nature—or caused by human error.
Long battery life is important for smartphones. However, many manufacturers implement problematic power-saving measures—some of which have unpleasant side effects. Apps that are not approved by the manufacturer are simply stopped when they are deemed inactive or after a certain period of time in order to save power:
WhatsApp isn’t the only thing that can create peer pressure and social coercion. Young people in particular don’t want to miss out on anything; they want to be popular and “in.” This makes it difficult to disconnect, turn off your cell phone, or expose yourself to the embarrassment of not always responding to messages immediately. They are constantly available and feel they have to respond to every message immediately.
At best, media stress regulates itself after a phase of intensive use when young users realize how much time they spend on their smartphones. Mutually agreed rules and restrictions for cell phone use help in this regard. A joint parents’ evening on the topic can also help to understand the scope of the problem for classes and groups and to find solutions together.
Unfortunately, chain letters with often serious content (attempts at fraud, intimidation, threats, or even death threats) spread quickly via messenger apps, causing uncertainty and fear. Anyone who receives chain letters of any kind should therefore follow this three-step rule:
Chain letter robot
It is important to be aware of this and to get help if needed. Saferinternet.at offers an automated service to relieve children of the psychological pressure caused by such content. On the website, you can enter text and receive helpful responses from the chain letter robot. This can also be done via WhatsApp message to a phone number—however, from the perspective of Facebook’s central metadata evaluation, this is not ideal, especially for such sensitive topics.
Go to the page: https://www.saferinternet.at/projekte/der-kettenbrief-chatbot (external)
Insults, assaults, and bullying attacks occur particularly in group chats. Group communication is especially stressful for victims when hostility and attacks within the group are systematically directed at one person. Even “hate groups” are formed for the sole purpose of destroying others.
Victims of bullying should not respond at all, leave such groups, use the block function (see “Blocking contacts” below), and confide in someone. It helps if parents take an interest in the circles of friends and groups in which their children are active. A good relationship with their parents makes it easier for young victims of bullying to tell them about hostility.
To report bullying, evidence should be secured, e.g., by forwarding messages (see “Forwarding content” below) or taking screenshots.
Source: https://www.internet-abc.de/eltern/familie-medien/kommunikation-handy-whatsapp-facebook/whatsapp/whatsapp-fuer-kinder-und-jugendliche (external)
If content that is harmful to minors or criminal is found via Messenger—e.g., in public or privately organized chat rooms—these incidents can be reported to “Internet-Beschwerdestelle.de” as a complaint (external). This is a joint project of eco - Association of the Internet Industry and the Voluntary Self-Regulation of Multimedia Service Providers (FSM).
Complaints received via “Internet-Beschwerdestelle.de” are first reviewed from a legal perspective. If the reported content violates the relevant youth media protection laws or relevant criminal laws, the operators of “Internet-Beschwerdestelle.de” can take further steps: The content provider is directly requested to modify the content or the host provider is asked to arrange for the content to be removed. In serious cases, the complaint may also be forwarded in anonymized form directly to the competent state authority.
According to the Interstate Treaty on the Protection of Minors in the Media (JMStV), complaints with the following content are processed:
Note:
In addition to complaints about “chat” incidents involving websites, email, file-sharing networks, newsgroups, discussion forums, or other content can also be reported.
Source: https://www.internet-beschwerdestelle.de.html (external)
The topic of messengers should not be overrated. This type of communication also has real disadvantages—in the private sphere, there is even an undisputed risk of addiction. When I asked an acquaintance which communication channel they use to share their prioritized (important) messages, I received the following answer, which I fully support:
Question: How do you share prioritized messages?
I have various methods:
The old-fashioned way, by phone. If it’s urgent, I call. If no one answers, I send a text message or an email – or both. I also know that some people don’t answer their phones at work, for example, but do respond to messenger messages. In that case, I use Messenger XY or text messages.
Conversely, a phone call also helps if an important email remains unanswered for a few days.
And I help the reader prioritize by choosing a subject line that summarizes the content. If it’s really urgent/important, I can also add “Urgent” to the beginning of the subject line. Some complex requests can also be divided into several emails with different subjects. Then my counterpart can decide whether to reply to the email with the brief information immediately and deal with the more complicated topic later, when things are quieter.
And probably the second most important aspect—I don’t send so many irrelevant messages. I often received feedback from friends that they read my Facebook posts—because I rarely posted anything.
In group chats, on the other hand, I hardly ever hang around anymore. They’re annoying, full of baby photos, memos, chain letters, and petitions that are irrelevant to the topic—important dates (content) are lost somewhere in between.
The most important aspect is the right to be unreachable and to have peace and quiet. I don’t always have to be available, and neither do the people I communicate with. In my experience, most things are not so urgent that they need to be answered immediately or cannot wait until the next day or meeting. And besides, a phone that isn’t constantly beeping leads to less stress. And if it is urgent, see above.
In summary, this means: I think ahead about whether and for whom my message is important and/or urgent, and then choose the appropriate communication channel.
It is also important to choose the right recipients and not to spread your messages unnecessarily widely.
No system is completely foolproof, as there are also general technical vulnerabilities. The following points should be considered with regard to “security” when devices are switched on:
Further reading: Vulnerabilities and security gaps in mobile communications (external) and Hidden operating systems (‘hidden os’) in smartphones (external; Privacyhandbuch)
“Unfortunately, almost all hardware contains proprietary components. Especially in the baseband! WIFI, modem, etc. Even in the supposedly open source Nitrokey 3, the secure element is proprietary. Can I change that? Can I change the Internet protocol or other messengers? No! Can I criticize that? YES! But will I let that stop me? NO! I do as Gandi does, peaceful non-cooperation, I simply don’t use the products of surveillance capitalism. And instead of being in an endless loop of what OTHERS are doing wrong, I or WE can start building our own communication infrastructure. With the money it costs to build a cell tower, we can get 1000 nodes.”
“At the same time, I find it really difficult to see an end to this if you want to be 100% anonymous and tap-proof. Where do we stop? At the IP stack? Why don’t we add the baseband insecurity of cell phones to that? Who among you reads the Android source code? What do we do about government Trojans that simply read your screen, no matter how secure the transmission of messages outside the cell phone is? Did you solder your own processor? And then let’s start searching our homes for bugs. “Hey Alexa, am I being bugged?”
“This is basically an intrinsic problem of all Clearnet-based P2P messengers (Clearnet = Internet Protocol).”
“Yes, these are all exciting and important topics. In this MUC “Free Messengers (DE),” I would prefer to limit myself to messengers (roughly OSI layer 7). There is already enough to discuss. Because anonymity and eavesdropping security are not everything, in my opinion. Ultimately, the first step is to get people away from proprietary, centralized solutions that are known (!) to read and censor everything and will soon (chat control) report it centrally. At least that is the starting point in my environment today.”
“People may have different security needs and therefore set the bar at different heights, but ultimately it’s also about what is feasible in a reasonable amount of time and whether performance and usability are also acceptable. There is no such thing as 100% security, we all know that. And everyone can decide for themselves which messenger best strikes the balance between security and usability for them.”