All-in-one messaging client?

Questions
1

I’m looking for a trustworthy all-in-one messaging client. (As in many chat services put into one app.)

There is a lot of messaging apps that are installed on my phone due to communities, and most of them steal your data. Can’t get them to switch to Signal since they’re fine with their own chat services. So I’ve only got one option, which is to use an all-in-one messaging client.

I’ve been considering Beeper (after searching through the forum), and I now do use it, but I don’t know if there’s a better option out there. It’s the only free one that I could look forward to, but I still have to consider the fact that it’s privacy policy is a bit of a deal-breaker.

There are some other apps such as of Beeper, but it is either barely discussed, or there isn’t much reputation to it.

I also do consider using the native and web apps, but it’s much of a hassle, plus the fact that it’s less of a convenience.

I would appreciate any recommendations, so long as it steals the least my data.

1 Like
2

What in it’s privacy policy was deal-breaking for you?

3

Matrix can accomplish this with its bridges, but ymmv, and I’m not sure how to set it up well.

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4

Privacy-wise, they collect a lot of data (what I’m worried about is PII), but logically speaking, I believe it’s the fact that they don’t specifically include what they could use a.k.a which data goes which, and they also do market stuff based on contact info.

I believe I should go into Element One, but I can’t go into paid options right now, but it’s as far as the best I could find. Well, other than the best in terms of ‘free’ which is Beeper.

It’s an obscure topic that not a lot of people talk about in terms of privacy, so there might be a better one that went under the radar.

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5

I just went through their privacy policy again. They do collect a lot:

    1. Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers);
    2. Commercial information (your billing information and purchase history, for example);
    3. Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of Beeper);
    4. Geolocation data (such as your approximate location based on your IP address);
    5. Audio, electronic, visual or similar information (such as your profile picture); and
    6. Inferences we make (such as likelihood of retention or attrition).

The worst irks that I saw are these:

We only share and disclose your information with the following third parties:

  • Service Providers. We may share your information with third parties that perform services for us (“Service Providers”) who perform services for us or on our behalf and require access to such information to do that work. We use Service Providers for payment processing, security, network management, and cloud storage, as well as other Service Providers.

  • Purchasers of Our Business. We may share your information in connection with any merger or acquisition of our business to another company.

They also keep that information forever until asked otherwise:

Unless we need to retain information for legal reasons (as described above), we keep your information until you ask us to delete it or until you delete your Beeper account. If you ever decide to stop using Beeper, you can ask us to delete your account by emailing us at privacy@beeper.com or logging into your account and clicking on settings.

All in all, please let me know the solution you are going with, because I do use Beeper and if there is something with the same features, but more private, I’d be willing to switch considering all of these.