Privacy rankings of popular messaging apps in 2025 | Kaspersky official blog
Although direct messages sent through a chat app are often perceived as a private conversation, it’s actually not that simple. Not only can your chats and data be used for advertising and AI training, but they can be shared with law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Furthermore, perfect strangers, or scammers — pretending to be your boss, for example — might reach out to you directly. Then again, attackers can use social engineering techniques to gain access to your account and read all of your chats in real-time.
Which services minimize the chance of these unwelcome events? That’s the question experts at the company Incogni set out to answer. They decided to compare popular social networks and messaging apps, and ranked them as per privacy levels from highest to lowest. The result is the Social Media Privacy Ranking 2025. This was an extensive study covering 15 social networks and chat apps, and comparing them across 18 criteria. Today, we focus on the scores for messaging apps and direct communication platforms — selecting only the most practical evaluation criteria. So, which of the common messaging apps are the most privacy-oriented?
Overall privacy rankings
We’ll start with Incogni’s final conclusions. After summing up all their scores across the criteria, they produced the following privacy rankings (lower is better):
- Discord: 10.23
- Telegram: 13.08
- Snapchat: 13.39
- Facebook Messenger: 22.22
- WhatsApp: 23.17
But don’t rush to migrate all your chats from WhatsApp to Discord just yet — comparing only the criteria that matter most reveals a different picture. Incogni’s comprehensive study included some very peculiar points, such as the number of fines for data retention violations across all countries, the number of past hacks and data breaches, the readability of the privacy policy, the time it takes to have your data deleted after an account closure request, and so on.
However, there are also highly practical criteria: the types of data collected by the mobile app, the privacy level by default, the amount of user data visible to non-contacts, the use of user data for AI training, and the option to opt out of this. For those concerned about excessive government interference in private correspondence, the score for the response rates to government requests for user information will also be of interest. If we add up the scores from only these practical categories, the rankings shift significantly:
- Telegram: 4.23
- Snapchat: 7.72
- Discord: 8.14
- WhatsApp: 11.93
- Facebook Messenger: 13.37
Incogni penalized WhatsApp 3.4 points for the fact that chats may be used for AI training, and users can’t opt out. However, there’s one important caveat: as of today, this only applies to user chats with Meta’s AI assistant, while other chats are still protected by end-to-end encryption, and can’t be used for training. Therefore, in our view, a more accurate score for WhatsApp would be 8.53; this doesn’t change its position, but significantly narrows the gap between it and the leading trio.
Let’s move past the numbers now, and review the practically significant findings of the analysis.
Private by default
An app focused on user interests sets all security and privacy settings to safe and private upon installation. The user can then lower the level of privacy where they choose to. Telegram and Snapchat exhibit this commendable behavior. Discord’s default settings are less private, while Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are down at the bottom of the rankings. A similar situation is found with the number of privacy settings — Telegram and Snapchat offer the most.
We’ve published detailed guides on setting up privacy in Telegram, WhatsApp, and Discord, and you can find privacy configuration tips for many other popular apps, devices, and operating systems on our free Privacy Checker portal.
Secure against strangers
Minimizing the amount of information strangers can see is crucial for both privacy and physical safety. It limits the possibilities for scams, spam, stalking, and child abuse. The most secure accounts are provided equally by Telegram and WhatsApp — tying for first place. Facebook Messenger and Snapchat share second, while Discord ranks last in this regard.
Cooperating with authorities
Telegram doesn’t disclose the percentage of government requests for personal data that it grants — though it’s known to be greater than zero. As for the other platforms, Snapchat most frequently approves such requests (82%), Meta’s services approve them in 78% of cases (the breakdown by service is unknown), and Discord is not far behind at 77.4%.
Collecting data for advertising and other purposes
Every platform collects a certain amount of information about its users, their socio-demographic profile, and preferences. The study distinguishes between general data collection and mobile-app data collection. The former was based on privacy policies; the latter used the data published for the apps in the App Store and Google Play.
Based on general data collection, the leaders with the least amount of collected data are Telegram and WhatsApp. Discord took second place, and Snapchat and Facebook Messenger both ranked last. Regarding mobile-app data collection, the picture is slightly different: Telegram leads by a significant margin, followed by WhatsApp in second place, then Discord, Snapchat, and finally, Facebook Messenger.
Which messaging app is best?
Among the services reviewed, Telegram collects the least data and provides the widest range of privacy settings. While Discord leads the overall rankings thanks to limited data collection and a clean record on privacy fines, it falls short in privacy settings, and doesn’t default to secure options. WhatsApp offers extensive protection against strangers, and collects a relatively modest amount of user data.
Note that the ranking focuses on mainstream apps; more niche messaging apps that place a strong emphasis on privacy were simply not included. Truly confidential/sensitive conversations should ideally be conducted on one of these dedicated private messaging apps.
Additionally, Incogni didn’t focus on encryption. Among the reviewed apps, only WhatsApp offers full end-to-end encryption for all chats by default. This is a crucial consideration, for the hugely popular Telegram doesn’t guarantee message privacy: chats aren’t end-to-end encrypted by default.
Finally, don’t forget that the indicated level of security applies only to the official mobile clients of these messaging services. The desktop versions of popular messaging apps are far more vulnerable due to their architecture. As for using mods or third-party clients, it’s best to avoid them entirely — malicious versions are routinely distributed both through channels and group chats within the messaging services themselves, and through official app stores such as Google Play.
To protect Android smartphones from these malicious apps, consider Kaspersky for Android. Incidentally, after a recent update, it now also blocks phishing and malicious links in all notifications from any messaging or other app.
Messaging apps today arguably hold the maximum amount of private information about each of us. To avoid becoming a victim of a data leak, read our other posts:
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