Comparing the amount of user data Facebook Messenger and iMessage collect, the results are staggering

When Apple launched iOS 14 at WWDC 2020, there was a new security feature that terrified Facebook. The security feature will notify iPhone and iPad users of personal data that an app collects. At the same time, applications need to be authorized by the user to collect this data.

It is not surprising that this security feature will block the life of Facebook, a company that provides a free service to collect user data for advertising purposes.

The new security feature of iOS 14 was officially applied by Apple a few days ago. And through that, we can see how much of our personal data the apps collect.

Page 9to5Mac has conducted a comparison of user data collected by Signal, iMessage, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger applications. The results are as shown below.

We don’t even need to read the contents of the data labels, to see how much data Facebook Messenger collects. When compared to the other 3 apps, Messenger took a dreadful amount of data. Even WhatsApp, when it was acquired by Facebook, does not collect as much data as Messenger.

The reason may be because WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption, so it restricts the collection of data from content messages. The Signal and iMessage apps also have similar encryption. Facebook Messenger alone is not available.

In particular, Signal does not collect any data from the user. Apple’s iMessage also collects some data, such as email addresses, phone numbers, search history, and device IDs.

WhatsApp also collects quite a lot of data: device ID, usernames, ad data, payment history, location, phone number, email, addresses, interactive products, crash data , system data, billing information, customer support, and other user data.

As for Facebook Messenger, this list is really too long to be listed.

Reference: 9to5mac