Claim your privacy

People often think that the information they send via SMS, on Facebook or in direct messages is private. But often it’s not.

There is a risk that each message you think you send privately could be read by your service provider, advertisers, and other organisations. Fortunately, there are some messaging apps that use encryption technology to ensure that your personal messages are sent to your family and friends without being viewed by unwanted eyes.

We've created resources to help you choose messaging apps with a higher level of privacy. Here's a short 30 second video that gets the point across:



Our infographics below explain why keeping your messages private is important and how to opt-in to secret conversations in Facebook Messenger.


We chose Signal, WhatsApp and Facebook Messengers' secret conversations because they all use the same, best-of-breed, encryption technology and the user experience is good. There are plenty of other messaging apps that provide some level of privacy, and some that provide opt-in end-to-end encryption (e.g. Google's new Allo app).

We think it's important for people to take personal responsibility for the applications they're using to communicate. These messaging apps have varying degrees of privacy, and with the use of encryption, some messaging apps are more private than others. You can read about a whole range of messaging apps, and their security, in the EFF's Secure Messaging Scorecard

Privacy, surveillance and you

We think you deserve your privacy and that when you expect a conversation to be private, it should be.

That’s why we're supporting the EFF’s Game Plan to stop global mass surveillance. We’ve looked at their plan and identified a number of things we can help do, or promote, to work towards a world without mass surveillance. Private messaging is one of these things. Below are links to both the EFF's Game Plan and also our own document that states how we can help to stop global mass surveillance.