Is Messenger safe to use?

Messenger integrates 1 third-party SDK. It collects data linked to your identity including Health & Fitness, Purchases, Financial Info, and Location and 10 more categories. It does not include any advertising or attribution SDKs. Whether this is acceptable depends on your personal privacy preferences.

What permissions does Messenger need?

Messenger requests 15 iOS permissions: Camera, Microphone, Contacts, Photo Library, Location (When In Use), Location (Always), Location (Always & When In Use), Calendars, Speech Recognition, Face ID, Save to Photo Library, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Peripheral, Siri, and Apple Music.

How many SDKs does Messenger have?

Messenger integrates 1 third-party SDK. It is RTCAndSpark, used for other. None are for advertising, attribution, or analytics.

Does Messenger access your location?

Yes. Messenger requests location access. The developer states: "Messenger uses this to provide more relevant and personalized experiences, like live location sharing and suggesting local places.".

Does Messenger access your camera or microphone?

Messenger requests access to both your camera and microphone. The developer says camera access is for "Messenger uses your device’s camera so you can do things like take photos, record and stream videos, make video calls, and create and use filters and effects". Microphone access is for "Messenger uses your device’s microphone so you can do things like record video with sound, make voice and video calls, and create voice messages". These permissions are only active when you grant them in iOS Settings.

Does Messenger access your contacts?

Yes. Messenger requests access to your contacts. The developer states: "Allowing access to your address book helps you see the contacts you can choose to add and helps us provide a better service.".

Does Messenger run in the background?

Yes. Messenger registers 9 background modes, which means it can perform certain tasks when you're not actively using it.

What are some alternatives to Messenger?

Other social networking apps include Yik Yak , 3F , AM , Backbone , BeReal. , and BiP . Each app takes a different approach to social networking and varies in its data collection and SDK usage.

Social Networking · Privacy report

Messenger

Free · ★4.7 · Meta Platforms, Inc.

Is Messenger safe?

It collects a lot of your data itself.

Our take. Its own App Store privacy label declares Messenger links 14 categories of your data to your identity, including health & fitness, purchases, financial info and location. It is owned by Meta, an advertising company, so that data is available to Meta. That collection, more than any outside tracker, is the story here.

Privacy footprint · vs 97 social networkingHeavy

Trackers from other companies0 · none

typical social networking: 4

Data the app links to you14 types · a lot

typical social networking: 5 · from its own privacy label

What it collects about you

Messenger links 14 categories of your data to you.

From the developer's own App Store privacy label. These are the kinds of data Messenger ties to your identity.

Health & FitnessPurchasesFinancial InfoLocationContact InfoContactsUser ContentSearch HistoryBrowsing HistoryIdentifiersUsage DataSensitive InfoDiagnosticsOther Data

Who else is inside

Owned by Meta.

Messenger carries no third-party trackers, but that is not the reassurance it sounds like. It is built by Meta, an advertising company, which builds its tracking in-house. The 14 categories of data it collects (above) flow to Meta directly, no outside SDK required.

How it compares

Where it sits among social networking.

Every one of these apps we have scanned, on the two measures above: third-party trackers it carries (across) and data it links to you on its own label (up). Toward the top right is more invasive.

Each dot is one social networking app. Messenger sits high on the left: it collects a lot itself but uses few outside trackers.

The evidence

What it's built from.

All 1 SDKs in the app, grouped by what they are for. None are third-party trackers.

1standard libraries

0 of the 1 are third-party trackers. The rest are the app's own code and standard open-source building blocks.

Show the full SDK list

Standard libraries1 · on-device

The app's own code plus open-source interface, storage and networking libraries.

How we know this

Counterspy downloads the app from the App Store and statically analyzes its compiled binary. Embedded SDKs are matched against a signature database and resolved to the company that operates each. We also read the developer's App Store privacy label, which lists the data the app says it collects and links to you. We do not run the app or intercept its traffic, so we report capabilities present in the code and the developer's own disclosures, not proven transmission. We assess privacy and data collection, not malware, security flaws, or developer intent. Reports are automated and never edited for payment. Scan v555.0.0, 2026-04-01.

Third-party trackers are advertising, analytics and attribution SDKs detected by static signature matching. Presence shows a capability is compiled in, not that it ran or transmitted data.
"Data the app links to you" is the count of data categories the developer declares as Data Linked To You in its App Store privacy label. Labels are self-reported and not verified by Apple.
Comparison across the 97 social networking in our corpus. Trackers: median 4. Data linked to you: median 5.