Safe browsing on Messenger

Always use caution when clicking on suspicious links, especially from people you don’t know.
It’s our priority to keep you safe while using Messenger.
Unfortunately there are unsafe links that some people send out, including the following:
These links may try to get you to give out passwords, personal or bank information or money.
Sometimes the people sending these links are people you don’t know, but sometimes someone you know may send an unsafe link if their account has been hacked.
To help protect yourself against these links when you click on links in end-to-end encrypted messages with someone on Messenger, you can use safe browsing. Enabling safe browsing will:
  • Warn you if you click on a suspicious link
  • Warn you about certain websites that may be unsafe
There are two setting options, standard and advanced browsing protection. By default, all users have advanced browsing protection turned on, but you can turn it off anytime in your Messenger privacy settings.
For any safe browsing setting that is turned on, your messages and calls in chats will stay secured with end-to-end encryption. Links sent in end-to-end encrypted chats can only be seen by you and the person you send them to. No one else, not even Meta, can access end-to-end encrypted messages unless someone reports them to us. We highly recommend keeping this feature on to protect yourself from scams, hackers, identity thieves or harmful software.
When you receive a suspicious link in a message, you can also report that conversation. Reporting the conversation helps us make Messenger safer.

Standard browsing protection

Standard browsing protection uses on-device machine learning to analyze thousands of possibly malicious links shared in chats. Since they’re analyzed on your device, Meta doesn’t receive an indication that an unsafe link was detected.
To turn on standard browsing protection:
  1. From Chats, tap menu in the top left of the Messenger app.
  2. Tap , then Privacy & safety.
  3. Tap Safe browsing under Security.
  4. Tap Standard browsing protection.
To turn off standard browsing protection:
  1. From Chats, tap menu in the top left of the Messenger app.
  2. Tap , then Privacy & safety.
  3. Tap Safe browsing under Security.
  4. Tap Off.

Advanced browsing protection

Advanced browsing protection will warn you about the websites covered by standard safe browsing as well as millions more . This is because advanced browsing protection uses technology that checks an encrypted part of a website URL against a list of possibly unsafe websites in our servers without revealing the actual website URL. This also allows advanced browsing protection to update very frequently and include new, potentially unsafe websites. Advanced browsing protection is automatically turned on for our users, but you can turn it on again if you have turned it off before.
To turn on Advanced browsing protection:
  1. From Chats, tap menu in the top left of the Messenger app.
  2. Tap , then Privacy & safety.
  3. Tap Safe browsing under Security.
  4. Tap Advanced browsing protection.
To turn off Advanced browsing protection:
  1. From Chats, tap menu in the top left of the Messenger app.
  2. Tap , then Privacy & safety.
  3. Tap Safe browsing under Security.
  4. Tap Off.
Learn more ways to keep your account secure on Messenger.

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