If you have a popular name combination, or just get a lot of email at work, you're bound to get an email that wasn't intended for you. You could ignore it, sure, but there are better ways to handle it.

AIM, a pioneer in the world of online messaging, is shutting down after 20 years. The service will officially shutter on December 15, with no plans for an official replacement from Oath, the Verizon-owned company that includes both America Online and Yahoo.

If you weren't swayed to incinerate your smart devices and encourage your family to go full Ron Swanson after recent reports on potential child-spying Disney apps, a damning examination of the wildly-popular Kik Messenger app may convince you to ready the blowtorch.

In honour of Skype's newest update, the video chat and messaging app is dropping support for a variety of platforms.

Team messaging application Slack is upping the ante in the battle of the collaboration platforms. With Slack, HipChat and Microsoft Teams all battling it out to master the collaboration game, Slack has added the ability to time limit guest access to chats and adding some extra information so you know more about guests.

A few months ago, Facebook announced its plans to start showing ads in Messenger. Now, we have a glimpse at what they will look like. They're huge and obnoxious. The moral of the story: Never message brands.

Android/iOS: It's way easier to send a quick message to someone than write a long email. Why can't email be like messaging? Hop thinks it can, turning your emails into chat-style conversations you can reply to quickly.

WhatsApp is one of the most popular private messaging apps out there, so it's a little surprising it didn't have support for two-step authentication. Now, the beta version of the app has added the feature so, like always, turn it on now.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced it was building bots that would let companies chat with you in Messenger. Now, the company has announced sponsored messages. They're like ads, but for your chat app.

The end-to-end message encryption Facebook promised to Messenger users back in July has finally finished rolling out to everyone. Here's how to enable it.

Android: Facebook's mobile apps are notorious for hogging battery life and resources. So, you'd probably love a stripped down Messenger app that was only 10MB, right? Well, it exists, but most countries can't use it yet.

Google just launched Allo, a new smart messaging app that comes with stickers, emoji and a powerful assistant who can answer all your questions. Let's take a look at its biggest features, and see if it's worth moving all your conversations over to it.

Android/iOS: Today, Google's rolling out Allo, the messaging app it previewed at I/O earlier this summer. This is also the first real glimpse we get into the new Google Assistant.

When you send a text message to someone else, there's a long, complicated path from your phone to theirs. If you've ever wondered just how that network works, this video breaks it down.

Today, Google dropped a news clusterbomb, launching Android VR, a new Google Assistant and an Amazon Echo-like Google Home hub. Here's all the coolest stuff from today's keynote.

Android (5.0+): With Android N, you can finally reply to notifications directly from the shade, but most users don't have N yet. For those on Lollipop or above, QuickReply emulates that same feature for most notifications.

Windows/Mac: WhatsApp is working hard to become your go-to messenger. Now that it's free for everyone, you can use WhatsApp on your computer with the new desktop apps.

Dear Lifehacker, I cannot delete individual text messages for some of the conversations on my iPhone 6s. I hold my finger on them until I see "more", tap more, and nothing happens! Not only is there no trash can, there isn't even a circle to check off to the left of the text. I dont want to delete the entire conversation because there are some texts I need to keep. Any suggestions?

WhatsApp, the popular messaging app, has rolled out encrypted messages for its entire service. The encryption now protects texts, voice calls video and chat rooms.