Signal vs Messenger

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.

You give Meta a worldwide, transferable, sublicensable license to host, use, distribute, modify, and create derivatives from content you share. Even though the license ends when content is deleted, it is very broad while the content remains on the service.

Deleting content or an account may take up to 90 days, plus up to another 90 days for backup removal. Some content can also be retained longer for legal, safety, or technical reasons.

The privacy policy says Meta collects data you provide, your activity and connections, device and cookie data, and information from partners and third parties. This gives Meta a broad view of your use both on and off the service.

Consumer claims generally go to courts in your home country, but other disputes and claims Meta brings against you may be forced into California courts under California law. That can make non-consumer disputes harder to fight for users outside the U.S.

You can view, download, and in some cases port your information. That gives users some portability and a way to take their data elsewhere.

Meta uses your personal data to personalize ads and sponsored content across Meta Products. You can manage ad preferences, but ad personalization is the default funding model.

Meta shares information across Meta companies for safety, compliance, feature development, and usage analysis. That means your data can travel within the Meta ecosystem even if you only use Messenger.

Meta says it does not sell your personal data to advertisers and does not directly identify you to them unless you give permission. That is better than services that monetize by selling identifiable user data.

Meta provides settings and help-center paths to delete information or your account. This is a meaningful user control, even though the process is not immediate.

Meta says it may update the terms and will notify you at least 30 days in advance, and continued use means acceptance. That is better than silent changes, but still leaves amendment power with Meta.