{"id":180153,"date":"2026-01-20T19:57:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T00:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20\/what-cybersecurity-experts-want-you-to-know-about-leaked-texts\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T01:25:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T06:25:13","slug":"what-cybersecurity-experts-want-you-to-know-about-leaked-texts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20\/what-cybersecurity-experts-want-you-to-know-about-leaked-texts\/","title":{"rendered":"What Cybersecurity Experts Want You To Know About Leaked Texts"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Cybersecurity Experts Want You To Know About Leaked Texts<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.huffpost.com\/entry\/cybersecurity-text-leaks_n_696fa836e4b0ced6f58707d5<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-01-20 19:57:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.huffpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. We all have a regrettable person or two in our contacts that we probably shouldn\u2019t be texting \u2014 and plenty of us have learned what happens when you don\u2019t watch your own back in an exchange with a frenemy who has quick screenshotting fingers. It seems French President Emmanuel Macron learned this lesson the hard way when President Donald Trump included screenshots from their text exchange and posted them early Tuesday morning.While the behavior might be uniquely worrisome when exhibited by world leaders, we do live in an age of \u201creceipts! proof! timelines!\u201d when private citizens surveilling one another (often explicitly trying to punish others via that same surveillance) feels fairly normalized.No, you aren\u2019t going to have matters of foreign diplomacy blown up for public consumption \u2015 but that bitchy comment you made in the soccer team carpool group chat could break containment in an alarmingly similar way. HuffPost spoke with experts on the practical and legal side of cybersecurity to unpack how you can keep yourself and your communications a little bit more secure. Here\u2019s what Macron (and you) can take away from getting your texts screenshotted and posted. There may not be anything \u201cillegal\u201d about Trump\u2019s screenshot posting. But that doesn\u2019t mean there won\u2019t be consequences. They just aren\u2019t quite legal ones. \u201cAs far as I\u2019m aware, there haven\u2019t been any international treaties or any laws that have been broken due to this,\u201d Maria Villegas Bravo, counsel for theElectronic Privacy Information Center, told HuffPost.\u201cThere\u2019s no real expectation of privacy outside of the trust you place in these other people that you are working with and sending messages to, so it is definitely breaking an unspoken mutually-assured agreement among a lot of the members of diplomatic corps [and] among world leaders,\u201d she said.However, it can be really concerning to see leaders demonstrate a less-than-safe cybersecurity ethos \u2014 and it makes sense if it raises some alarm for you as a citizen.\u201cThere really needs to be a lot stronger op-sec, both in terms of a counterintelligence angle of other governments learning what the US government is up to \u2014 that is obviously a huge angle \u2014 but also for transparency reasons,\u201d Villegas Bravo said. \u201cThere are a lot of records that should be maintained by the federal archives that just aren\u2019t being documented properly and that means that there\u2019s less transparency into what the government is deciding to do, how they\u2019re deciding to do things and what they\u2019re able to provide in FOIA requests or other open-government requests.\u201d\u201cI do believe this is going to limit a lot of the trust and a lot of the ability of world leaders, international governments, from speaking candidly \u2014 and maybe not through official channels with the US government,\u201d Villegas Bravo continued. \u201cSo there might be some breakdown in communication. But, technically, from what I understand, not illegal.\u201dpicture alliance via Getty ImagesThe trustworthiness of the person on the other end of the line matters a whole lot when deciding whether to use a more informal communications channel like texting. Private citizens do have a few more protections \u2014 for example, if your private information is \u201cleaked to the press or the community at large,\u201d Villegas Bravo said. You might be able to sue in cases where your privacy has been violated in a way that is \u201csufficiently widespread to be constituted as disclosure.\u201d (Think: something like the Hulk Hogan sex tape situation in 2015.) Likewise, some state-level laws like Daniel\u2019s Law in New Jersey allow \u201ccovered persons\u201d (judicial officers, prosecutors, law enforcement, child protective service investigators and their immediate family members who share a household with them) to have publicly identifying information deleted from public websites. \u201cIf [a covered individual\u2019s] private information, their address or their phone number, is leaked to the public, they are able to have that taken down or have that removed from public websites,\u201d Villegas Bravo noted, \u201cwhich is really great, but should be expanded really to the general public.\u201d But, again, these laws don\u2019t protect you from someone you chose to communicate with choosing to pass along what you communicated to them. We\u2019ll get to some more technical tips later \u2014 but the best defense is not sending something you wouldn\u2019t want read aloud via text.\u201cThere\u2019s a very common refrain in like the legal world: \u2018Don\u2019t send an email, don\u2019t send a text, unless you\u2019re willing to have a judge read it into the record in trial.\u2019\u201d Villegas Bravo said, later adding: \u201cThat should be something you\u2019re considering with every message you send, especially with more sensitive or more intimate details or maybe classified information.\u201dThis can feel obvious, but it\u2019s something a lot of people might overlook in daily life, when our phones feel like extensions of ourselves and the threats to privacy are so numerous.That\u2019s also why it\u2019s important to consider the proper channel for the kind of communicating you\u2019re doing before you send a text. This can range from making sure you\u2019re using the \u201ccorrect\u201d channels for more official work (like if you work in the government) or \u201cmonitoring your communications, knowing what should be an in-person conversation versus what should be written down versus what should be maybe a phone call,\u201d Villegas Bravo said. This is also important for activists in group chats (yes, even the encrypted ones): \u201cI think people get a little bit more willy-nilly there, thinking like \u2018Oh, I\u2019m on an encrypted chat platform. Therefore, this is safe,\u2019\u201d Thorin Klosowski, a security and privacy activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told HuffPost. \u201cBut that just kind of accounts for one part of the equation, one part of the danger. If there\u2019s people you don\u2019t know in there, that\u2019s always gonna be a risk \u2014 even just people that you do know who maybe you don\u2019t trust super well.\u201d Avoiding handing a \u201cpaper trail\u201d over to someone who sucks certainly helps. Ultimately, the trustworthiness of the person on the other end of the line matters a whole lot when deciding whether to use a more informal (and often more insecure) channel like texting. Villegas Bravo said a lot of this comes down to \u201cforethought\u201d and \u201cknowing who you\u2019re talking to when you\u2019re talking to them and what kind of paper trail you\u2019re leaving.\u201d\u201cIt\u2019s one of those things where it\u2019s like you don\u2019t expect the leader of a country to so blatantly go against known diplomatic practices,\u201d she said. \u201cBut for, like, the everyday person? Yeah, just know who you\u2019re talking to. Do you trust them? How much are you willing to go public with certain things?\u201d In a worst-case scenario where your texts get screenshotted and leaked, as Klosowski said, you might just end up at the mercy of that recipient\u2019s humanity. And, unsurprisingly, your mileage may vary with that one.\u201cI don\u2019t know that there\u2019s much you can do beyond asking that person politely to remove the thing that they shared or to not [share it] if they have a screenshot but haven\u2019t posted it on the internet,\u201d Klosowski said. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a lot you can really do beyond just appealing to their human nature.\u201dIt\u2019s up to you to determine if the person on the other end is someone who has such a nature you can appeal to \u2014 but you can avoid putting yourself in that situation entirely by also staying firmly aware of who you are speaking to and what you are speaking to them about. (And that does include checking to make sure the chat you\u2019re in doesn\u2019t have some random guy in it.)\u201cIn my experience, people just kind of tend to forget \u2014 especially in group chats \u2014 there\u2019s a lot of different people in those and forgetting who is in them or not knowing everyone who is in them is kind of a recipe for something to get screenshot or shared without your knowledge,\u201d Klosowski said.You do still need to practice some digital hygiene.A high-level faux pas can be an open door to cleaning up your own cybersecurity hygiene and safeguarding your own butt against an embarrassing and preventable disclosure. One thing both Klosowski and Villegas Bravo emphasize is that using and familiarizing yourself with encrypted messaging options (and their features) is something you should prioritize. \u201cThere are some tools in some apps that you can use,\u201d Klosowski adds. \u201cEspecially with one-on-one communications, you can turn on something like disappearing messages, which at least makes it so something doesn\u2019t stick around \u2014 but does not stop someone from screenshotting in the moment.\u201dEven if you are already firmly using one of these apps, it can help to get under the hood of the specific one you\u2019re using (EFF has guides for Signal and WhatsApp readily available) and understand how features like disappearing messages, group chats and even your contact list work to avoid doing something you\u2019ll regret.\u201cThere\u2019s not a magic bullet here, and I think that\u2019s kind of the lesson for all of us,\u201d Klosowski said. \u201cYou can tweak settings to any degree, but if you aren\u2019t familiar with how the apps work, what they\u2019re doing and what your friends aren\u2019t doing … having a curiosity about how these work and actually spending time in [them] instead of just sending messages back and forth and assuming you\u2019re safe is the best way to protect yourself with the people you talk with.\u201d You can also use resources like EFF\u2019s \u201cSurveillance Self Defense Toolkit\u201d to familiarize yourself with more cybersecurity best practices that fit you and your communication style.
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