Communication apps, reviewed
Messaging and calling apps handle some of the most sensitive data on your phone: your contacts, your conversations, and often your location. The reviews in this section pay particular attention to encryption standards, metadata collection, and how much each app asks for before you can send your first message.
LINE
Japan's everything-app: essential in its home markets, sprawling everywhere, with a data-handling history worth reading.
Messenger
Meta's chat giant finally encrypts by default — the data collection around the edges has not gone anywhere.
Microsoft Teams
The workplace hub most people didn't choose: capable, sprawling, and worth configuring before it configures you.
Rakuten Viber Messenger
Encrypted by default and huge in Eastern Europe — if you can live with the ads Rakuten keeps stuffing in.
Signal Private Messenger
The messenger security researchers actually recommend, run by a nonprofit with nothing to sell you.
Telegram
A fast, feature-packed messenger with a privacy reputation it only partly deserves.
WhatsApp Messenger
The world's default messenger, with end-to-end encryption and a few caveats worth knowing.
Zoom Workplace
The pandemic's video-call verb, now a workplace suite — better secured than its 2020 reputation, with fine print intact.