How to choose a video chat app? Grade it on privacy
Zoom, FaceTime, Houseparty, Hangouts, WhatsApp, Skype—with so many options on the market, consumers ought to opt for safety and security.
In Techland, everyone loves a good rivalry. There are the smartphone wars (iOS vs. Android). The ride-hailing rumblings (Uber vs. Lyft). The music match-ups (Spotify vs. Pandora). The video-streaming vendettas (Netflix vs. Quibi—lol, just kidding!).
Virtual conferencing software, somewhat amazingly, bucks the trend. While Zoom has rocketed to prominence during the time of quarantine, people are just as likely to use one of the many other options on the market: Apple’s FaceTime, Facebook’s WhatsApp, Microsoft’s Skype, the list goes on.
How do they all stack up against each other? Since the U.S. National Security Agency published its report assessing the security of various video chat apps, two respected non-profits have followed suit. Consumer Reports, known for its independent product testing and reviews, and the Mozilla Foundation, the group behind the Firefox web browser, surveyed the privacy implications of some of the most popular options.
The privacy policies leave much to be desired. That was the standout finding from Consumer Reports, which looked at the legalese behind Cisco’s WebX, Microsoft Teams and Skype, and Google’s Meet, Duo, and Hangouts.
The terms of service for these services’ data collection and sharing remain unclear. To quote the report, all three companies “reserve the right to store information on how long a call lasts; who’s on it; and everyone’s IP, or internet address,” data they can then combine with other information to build profiles of people. In an accompanying statement, Katie McInnis, Consumer Reports’ policy counsel, demanded that the companies manage this information with care and “ensure that they are respecting the digital rights of users.”
The surprise finding from the Mozilla report was that Zoom has really stepped up its game since security researchers pointed out its flaws in recent weeks, while other apps, like Houseparty, seem mostly to have gotten a pass on scrutiny. That latter app, owned by Fortnite-maker Epic Games, apparently continues to accept weak passwords like “12345,” and lets people “sneak” unnoticed into contacts’ virtual rooms. Since Houseparty caters a younger demographic, the security and privacy of the service matters even more.
Because there is so much variety in the video-chatting category, narrowing down the selection can be difficult. Safety seems as good a grading criterion as any.
Robert Hackett
Twitter: @rhhackett
Email: robert.hackett@fortune.com