How To Access Facebook Messenger’s Hidden Inbox

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Facebook is always making updates and tweaking their systems, but sometimes it can be hard to keep up with all the changes. The updates to messenger are always particularly confusing. In an attempt to filter out spam, the company has separated many of our messages.

As some Facebook users have been learning recently, there is a hidden inbox. This inbox is called the “message requests folder.”

You can access the message requests folder on the Messenger app by tapping on the People tab that is shown on the image below.

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When you see the people tab, click on the chat icon to view the message request folder. The correct icon is circled in the image below.

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The messages in this folder are from people who you are not connected with already on Facebook. This also means that when you send a message to someone who is not your friend on Facebook, they will not directly get your message, but it will be sent to this folder instead.

Facebook has been working hard to repair its reputation after years of controversy, and as a part of creating a new image, the company says that it will be taking a focus on privacy and security. Facebook is taking it a step further by allowing White Hat hackers to test their security systems across all of their services.

According to Hacking Vision:

“Facebook will knowingly break its Certificate Pinning mechanism for its users that use white hat settings. Pinning is used to improve the security of a website that uses SSL. Pinning allows websites to allow or disallow a user by searching for a specific cryptographic identity. SSL Certificate Pinning techniques are often used to defend against sniffing attacks.”

If you think you have what it takes, or if you are just curious, you can enable the White Hat researcher settings by going to the following URL:

https://www.facebook.com/whitehat/researcher-settings/

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According to Naked Security:

“Nearly all Facebook-owned apps make it as hard as they can to stop tricks such as Man in the Middle (MITM) attacks, which could allow rogues in your local coffee shop to spy on you, but this also makes it tough for ethical hackers and security researchers to intercept and analyze network traffic to find server-side security vulnerabilities. That’s why Facebook decided to help them out by giving them Researcher Settings so they can dial back their connection security and pretend that it’s still 2009.”

You can also activate these settings on your mobile devices as well, by going into Facebook’s main app. Unfortunately, if you are looking to enable these settings on the Facebook Messenger app or Instagram, that option is only available for Android at this time.

Just look under “settings and privacy” for the White Hat option.

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Paul Ducklin of Naked Security says that this function even allows people to spy on themselves to see how things work under the hood.

Facebook is helping security researchers have their cake and eat it, too. By default, you’re protected against other people sniffing out your network traffic, which stops them seeing what data you’re sending to Facebook. But now you can carefully snoop on yourself when you need to, so you can see how Facebook is sending your data. That’s good for security, privacy, and transparency,” Ducklin says.

Facebook White Hat settings reportedly have a built-in proxy that can be used for API interactions. Facebook White Hat settings also have a feature that can disable TLS 1.3 support.

Once White Hat researcher settings are enabled, you will notice a White Hat Settings button in each of the applications that you selected.

Also this year, the company has enabled a dark mode on their mobile app, and it is also unlocked with a secret. All you need to do is send a crescent moon emoji to one of your friends and you will have access to the new mode.

In a long awaited update, Facebook users are also now allowed to unsend messages that they regret sending. Now you will notice a drop down menu next to all of your messages. One of the options on this list, “remove,” will allow you to delete previously sent messages.

If you have any other questions, try to consult the Facebook Help Page.

© AnonLAB 2019

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