Viber

Viber seems to do a fairly good job at protecting their users' privacy and security. Especially when compared to other similar messaging apps like Telegram and Whatsapp. It's not perfect, but we do like they've been using end-to-end encryption by default since 2016 (except for group calls, those are only encrypted in transit). Some other good thing they do: Once a message is delivered, it is deleted from their servers so your messages aren’t sitting around where others could potentially access them and you can choose to hide yourself from any of the contacts in your contact list (handy when it comes to that ex of yours!). Some things they do we don’t love: When you join a group, your phone number will be visible to all group members, which could be a lot of people, so be careful. Also, Viber has had problems with bad people sending lots of spam and viruses. As always, it’s good to be careful reading or downloading things from people you don’t know. And it's been reported about 20% of Viber’s revenue comes from ads. They collect users’ IP-address location, gender, and age to target these ads, although users can opt out of gender and age targeting if they take the time to change their settings. Their ad partners may also combine the data collected about you when using Viber with their outside records to do even more targeting. So lock those settings down as much as you can! One thing we really loved about Viber is in 2020 they joined the #StopHateForProfit campaign (Mozilla did too!) and cut all business ties with Facebook. Gotta love a company that takes a stand against hate, misinformation, and unethical privacy practices!