This place (minavesguerra dot com) is where you find me

A few months ago I migrated a family group chat from Meta/FB Messenger to a different platform because a tita’s FB account got compromised and the account was still pretending to be my tita in the group chat. Had to verify each account if it was really tito/tita/cousin before adding it to the new one.

That space is dangerous for many reasons and not just the latest ones [archived article]. I highly recommend, to Filipinos especially, transition your family out of it asap. If not completely right away, then start with the group chat where personal information is discussed. Treat every account as compromised. If you can see them in person, and then add them to the group chat, while seeing their phone and seeing the account you invited getting the invite, and then seeing it being added in real time, do that.

While we’re at it, this is a concern for the book industry as well, because so much of the Philippine book industry’s communications is through that very compromised platform. Some publishers and suppliers have their entire internet presence only on FB, a space increasingly associated with suspicious activity. Transition away, invest in your own websites, use email again. Stop using FB as the primary platform. Yes, many Filipinos are on it, but prioritize a safer place to communicate and establish your credibility.

I accidentally got some people to switch to emailing me when I couldn’t access my Messenger for months (thank you so much!), but the habit hasn’t completely stopped for every single person. I’ll insist on this now.

My about page has my updated contact email. If you know my Gmail, that still works. If you prefer receiving email updates, I have an email newsletter too.

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