If only one of them has the other's phone number, the one without the other person in his contacts will see him under Friend Recommendations, while the person who has the phone number stored will see him in under Friends. If two users have each other in their address books they'll be automatically matched as friends. Line also accesses phones and emails from your address book to find friends using the service and stores that information encrypted on their servers. As far as data collection goes, the app requires a mobile phone number and optionally an email address if you'll be accessing it from a computer or other devices. Line's terms of service emphasize the company's commitment to privacy and security but doesn't give out much details regarding methods used for encryption. An update designed to fix this is already in beta featuring new privacy settings that'll let you chose who's able to see these things. Furthermore, anyone who has you on their phone's address book (whether you're aware or not) will be able to see your profile picture, current status and last online timestamp unless you block them. While relying on information from your address book is a fast and convenient way to quickly find people you know and who are also using WhatsApp, it means that phone numbers from everyone's address book are mirrored on the company's servers. Like all others on this list, they do leave some doors open saying they may retain some information when legally compelled to. If the recipient is not online, the undelivered message is held in WhatsApp's servers until it can be delivered, for up to 30 days before being deleted. The contents of messages are routed through the company's servers to the intended recipient and are not copied, kept or archived. It's not clear what they're using, the TOS make no mention of encryption whatsoever and warn about using public Wi-Fi. The service's support staff have said messages are encrypted in the "latest version" of the iOS and Android clients. Things have gotten better but the company is still fairly noncommittal and vague about this.įor one thing, WhatsApp's TOS says it uses commercially reasonable physical, managerial, and technical safeguards to preserve the integrity and security of your personal information. But the company has seen its fair share of criticism for being careless with privacy and security - messages used to be sent and received in plain text and hackers have demonstrated how to hijack an account. WhatsApp prides itself of being anti-advertising and thus not storing anything past your phone number (which it needs to function) or caring about the contents of messages. I took a closer look at their policies and here's what I could gather. While we can't vouch for any particular service, it's true that some are more consumer friendly than others in this respect. Privacy and security are hot topics these days with all the high profile data breaches and government (or otherwise) snooping. This table was created with Compare Ninja. Our goal isn't to cover every other client out there but to give you a general view of what's available. Though we've highlighted some of the most popular options, depending on where you are reading from, you might be wondering why WeChat and KakaoTalk weren't mentioned - both are bigger than BBM after all. Below is our side-by-side feature comparison for today's top contenders this side of the globe, followed by some notes on each company's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to give you some perspective on where they stand. But as it is with any hot trend, there's no shortage of alternatives. It's also purposely light on features due to a "no ads, no games, no gimmicks" policy. While WhatsApp is an international phenomenon, it still isn't as big a deal in the US. After all people use them to send each other texts, videos, photos and other content either one-on-one or as a group. Messaging is not only among the top activities on smartphones (if not THE top activity), messaging apps are increasingly seen as social networks. At the heart of it all is the attractiveness of their user base in the case of WhatsApp, the service is on the path to connect 1 billion people, and with higher engagement than Facebook itself it was a key move to dominate the mobile space. Mobile messaging is huge in tech right now and consolidation is coming fast, as evidenced by the recent acquisition of Viber for $900 million and WhatsApp for a jaw-dropping $19 billion in cash and stock. Feature-by-feature rundown, PLUS a look at the top contenders' data policies
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