Beeper, Facebook and old services

2025-05-25 11:59

I had been using Beeper on my Android so I could have Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and RCS/SMS messages all in the one place and not have to open all those apps separately depending who I was messaging. It was brought to my attention via a post on Gemini that Beeper is just adding another level of privacy vulnerability, pulling in supposedly secure messages from the aforementioned services into it's own service. So, in light of that obvious information under my nose which I chose to ignore at the time, and now with a bit more interest in digital privacy, and light encouragement from sites such as CLOAK I've decided to delete Beeper. I will continue to use Messenger and WhatsApp, and re-enable notifications. Unfortunately friends, family and community groups are pretty hardwired to those so I can't remove myself completely.

I use Facebook for Market Place occasionally. That's the only reason I don't have FB disabled. So I don't have to be bombed with slop every time I login I have recently installed the News Feed Eradicator Firefox add-on. The add-on replaces the main feed with an "inspirational quote":

Sorry friends who still use FB, your posts were getting swallowed up anyway. Consider starting a blog. There are plenty of options. It's much nicer for both you and your readers.

I've also been deleting old services as listed in my Bitwarden password manager. Currently I have 215 registered logins/passwords for a myriad of services. A lot I don't use any more, so again to reduce my attack surface I have been occasionaly removing any unused ones. It's a slow process though. Some places really don't make it easy for you to leave.