Messenger vs Signal

Meta collects a very wide range of data, including activity, contacts, device identifiers, purchases, location, cookies, and partner data, even in some cases without an account. This enables deep profiling beyond simple messaging functionality.

If you use the free ad-supported version, Meta uses your information to personalize and measure ads on and off Meta products. This means your behavior and inferred interests help drive advertising decisions.

Meta may combine information across Meta products, and some cross-product use happens even without opting into Accounts Center. This can expand tracking and profiling across services.

Your information may be shared with other Meta companies, service providers, partners, law enforcement, and others for business, safety, and legal purposes. This broad sharing increases the number of entities handling your data.

You keep ownership of your content, but grant Meta a worldwide, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable license to use and modify it for service operation. This is broader than many users expect when sharing content.

Consumer disputes can generally be brought in the courts of your home country under local law. This is much more user-friendly than mandatory arbitration or foreign-exclusive court clauses for consumers.

Meta says users have rights to access, correct, download, port, object to some processing, withdraw consent, and request deletion, subject to applicable law. These are meaningful privacy controls, especially for users covered by GDPR-style laws.

Deleting content or your account is not immediate: removal can take up to 90 days, plus up to another 90 days for backups, and some data may be kept longer. In practice, your information may remain in Meta systems for months.

Content you make public can be seen, reshared, downloaded, and indexed off Meta products, including by search engines and third parties. Once public, practical control over that content is limited.

Meta states it does not sell personal information and does not share direct identifiers like name or email with advertisers without specific permission. That does not eliminate ad profiling, but it is still a meaningful limit.

Meta can update the terms with 30 days' notice, and continued use counts as acceptance. Users who disagree generally must stop using the service.

Meta promises notice before material privacy policy changes and at least 30 days' notice for most terms changes. This gives users some time to review changes and decide whether to continue.

Signal explicitly says it does not sell, rent, or monetize your personal data or content. That is a strong privacy commitment compared with many ad-supported services.

Signal says it cannot access the contents of your messages or calls because they are end-to-end encrypted. In practice, this sharply limits what the company can read or disclose about your communications.

If Signal harms you, its total contractual liability is capped at $100 to the extent allowed by law, and many categories of damages are excluded. This significantly limits practical remedies.

The policy says message history stays on your devices and that server-side technical data is limited to what is necessary to operate the service. This reduces the amount of personal information retained centrally.

You must sign up with a phone number and accept verification texts or calls. That creates an identity link many privacy-conscious users may prefer to avoid.

Disputes must be brought in specified California courts under California law. This can make it harder or costlier for non-California or international users to pursue claims.

Signal can update its terms and privacy policy, with continued use treated as acceptance, and it may suspend or terminate access at any time for any reason. Users have limited leverage if terms worsen or access is cut off.

Signal states that you own the information you submit through the service. Notably, the terms do not describe a broad content license letting Signal exploit user content.

If you use contact discovery, Signal may hash address-book data and send it to its servers to find other users. This is optional and privacy-protective by design, but still involves sharing derived contact data.

Signal says encrypted information and metadata may be transferred to the United States and other countries where it or its providers operate. Users outside those countries may face different legal protections.

Signal is not a substitute for emergency services. Relying on it in a crisis could be dangerous because it does not connect to police, fire, hospitals, or similar services.

Users can manage personal information and enable extra protections like a Registration Lock PIN in the app settings. This is a useful transparency and account-security feature.