Referencing a recent comment by Quirt, saying nothing on "social media" is safe.

I've been insisting my sons communicate by email instead of FBK PMS, but I wonder if there are any venues which can be considered truly private. Not for State Secrets but just to protect ones personal information for whatever reason. (One son has almost completely dismantled his FBK account, even to the degree of altering his profile picture by some special ap that makes it unrecognizable as a human being to circumvent facial recognition searches - perhaps because of past content.)

I hate Facebook's privacy policy as best I understand it (the user IS the product, and that they frankly own all content). Also, of course, I despise Zuckerberg's mercenary policy of not flagging blatantly false and/or deliberately divisive content. I also hate their PMs - so temptingly easy to rely on, besides which it's near impossible to find anything in past messages. Addresses, songs, ANYTHING one wishes to reference. (I really wish they had a search feature for both PMs and profiles).

Wondering, though, if there's any difference in privacy between messages sent via FB PMs and any other form of internet communication.

Erring on the side of caution of course, means not using the Internet for "anything one wouldn't want in the New York Times") but I wonder if there are degrees of publicity. Are any email servers safe, encrypted? Can one expect anything online to be truly private apart from phone calls?

I'm not, of course, including any privately used/devised encryption method between involved parties. I'm sure governments have their ways in communicating State secrets (codes + encryption?)

That's a hard question to answer, because there are several methods. All require some sort of permission/authentication setup, and most also require encryption (again with authentication).

Just because the word "private" is in the name of the message (such as with FB PM's) doesn't mean it's private. Facebook accounts get hacked all the time. They are also open to subpoenas and things of that nature.

Emails specifically? It depends on the service, and who is sending and receiving information. Gmail and Outlook encrypt by default, but if you receive and/or reply to a non-gmail or outlook email it will not be encrypted on the receiving end, so it is technically not private.

If you are a gmail or outlook user, check to see if your url starts with "https." That is an encrypted server. But having emails on an encrypted server says nothing about encryption in transit (going from one server to another) which is a whole other thing.

Bottom line, it's a very complicated question and the short answer is "no, not without a lot of setup." And again, most email services will respond to subpoenas, at least here in the USA.

(Another level of complication--emails and messages travel internationally, and different countries have different laws about levels of security.)

You should configure your emails to be as secure as Fort Knox. But you know nothing about what the recipient is doing with that information, or where and how it's being stored by them.

Encrypted e-mail. At work, we use Outlook with encryption turned on. It's a mild pain to set up.

Anything going out over the public internet is not secure. If it can be intercepted, it will be, and if it's not encrypted it can be read. Encryption makes it harder to read, but not impossible. You need industrial-strength tools to crack commercial encryption.

Outlook is a dedicated e-mail application, not a web browser interface like gmail. Your web browser is not secure, either. HTTPS (when you see the web address start with https, not just http) helps, but only some.

Outlook is part of Microsoft Office.

I have no idea if Outlook is available as a mobile app. On my work phone, I use the iPhone native Mail app, but my company's IT department has added some security stuff so I can send and receive encrypted e-mail.

gmail is not secure. I would say anything owned by guugle, twidder, or facebuuk is not secure. I think that now covers whatsapp, instagram, and several other social media platforms.

In general, I would say that if it's free, it's not secure.

But for general communication -- like personal, medical, and sensitive stuff (NOT financial), plain e-mail is pretty okay... and a heck of a lot better than DMs or PMs on any social media platform.

For financial stuff, only use a trusted company's platform (app or web site), or phone or snailmail. Never send anything like credit card details or bank account numbers by e-mail. I don't even send that by encrypted e-mail. Just no.

I hope this helps. If it makes you a tad uncomfortable, good.

Just recalling hearing of private citizens using proxy servers to avoid endangering themselves in internet communication (China's censorship laws being so extraordinarily strict).

Don't know if they're still in use - and effective.

[URL= https://books.google.com/books...roxies&f=false]proxy servers protect internet users in China[/URL]

WhatsApp’s “end-to-end” encryption is pretty “private” as far as we know.

For more flexibility, encryption tools like https://gpgtools.org/ can be used.

Thank you all very much. I certainly asked knowledgeable folks! (As if I'd be able to use anything "fancy"!)

PJ's admonitions are welcome, as I do a lot of business in online banks (and now can't find how to extricate my money - whatever I'll do with it, is another story...)

The son who works for a large Internet company, is able to subscribe on my behalf to an insurance policy guaranteeing to reimburse users for any money lost through internet use. That's where I'll go. (Now I "just" have to collect for him all my policy numbers, IDs, passwords, etc. - also FTM for online friends (WTF!). Come to think of it, how to get it all to him? LOL.

Meanwhile however insignificant from a fiscal POV, I continue to be embarrassed by the evolving algorithm QUORA uses to send me content. (Nevermind! )

Snail mail for anything sensitive. Or a telephone call.

I can't be the only one who remembers Zorba, the male belly dancer, whose tagline was: Face****.

BTW, I know what Zuckerberg did to the native Hawaiians in collision with the State government when he bought his plantation sized estate on Kauai. He used a system whereby ancient families without paper title to their land were kicked off it.

I know a lot of people like Facebook. I don't like it for various reasons.