Is Viber safe to use?

Viber integrates 19 third-party SDKs spanning advertising, analytics, and social. Its App Store privacy label declares cross-app tracking via Location, Contact Info, Browsing History, and Identifiers. It collects data linked to your identity including Purchases, Location, Contact Info, and Contacts and 5 more categories. It includes 3 advertising or attribution SDKs. Whether this is acceptable depends on your personal privacy preferences.

What permissions does Viber need?

Viber requests 12 iOS permissions: App Tracking Transparency, Camera, Microphone, Contacts, Photo Library, Location (When In Use), Location (Always), Calendars, Speech Recognition, Face ID, Local Network, and Siri.

What data does Viber collect?

According to its App Store privacy label, Viber declares cross-app tracking via Location, Contact Info, Browsing History, and Identifiers. It collects data linked to your identity including Purchases, Location, Contact Info, Contacts, User Content, Browsing History, Identifiers, Usage Data, and Sensitive Info. It collects Usage Data and Diagnostics not linked to your identity.

How many SDKs does Viber have?

Viber integrates 19 third-party SDKs. 2 for advertising, 1 for attribution, 2 for analytics, 2 for social integration, 1 for infrastructure, and 11 for other.

Does Viber use Google SDKs?

Yes. Viber includes 1 Google or Firebase SDK: ViberFirebaseAnalyticsInterfaces. These are primarily used for analytics and cloud services.

Does Viber use App Tracking Transparency?

Yes. Viber requests the App Tracking Transparency permission, which means it asks for your consent to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites.

Does Viber access your location?

Yes. Viber requests location access. The developer states: "Your location will be used when you send location messages or use other location-based features".

Does Viber access your camera or microphone?

Viber requests access to both your camera and microphone. The developer says camera access is for "Your camera is needed in order to take photos, capture videos or make video calls and apply fun AR experiences. Some Lenses may use Apple's TrueDepth". Microphone access is for "Your microphone will be used for making calls and sending audio messages". These permissions are only active when you grant them in iOS Settings.

Does Viber access your contacts?

Yes. Viber requests access to your contacts. The developer states: "To easily connect with your friends and family, allow uploading your contacts to Viber's servers.".

Does Viber run in the background?

Yes. Viber registers 5 background modes, which means it can perform certain tasks when you're not actively using it.

What are some alternatives to Viber?

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

Rakuten Viber Messenger

Free · ★4.6 · Viber Media SARL.

Is Viber safe?

It collects a lot of your data itself.

Our take. Its own App Store privacy label declares Viber links 9 categories of your data to your identity, and shares data to track you across other companies apps and websites, including purchases, location, contact info and contacts. That collection, more than any outside tracker, is the story here.

Privacy footprint · vs 97 social networkingHeavy

Trackers from other companies5 · some

typical social networking: 4

Data the app links to you9 types · a lot

typical social networking: 5 · from its own privacy label

What it collects about you

Viber links 9 categories of your data to you.

From the developer's own App Store privacy label. These are the kinds of data Viber ties to your identity, and it also declares it shares data to track you across other apps.

PurchasesLocationContact InfoContactsUser ContentBrowsing HistoryIdentifiersUsage DataSensitive Info

Who else is inside

It carries trackers from 3 companies.

Third-party SDKs found in the app, matched to the company that publishes each. Present in the code; we do not observe what they transmit.

🏢Other third partiesadvertising

A third-party SDK.

SDKs

🏢Messaging SDKMessaging

Push notification and messaging platform.

SDKs

🇩🇪AdjustAttribution · Germany

Marketing attribution, built to tie installs and in app events back to ad campaigns.

SDK

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. Viber sits high on the left: it collects a lot itself but uses few outside trackers.

Other signals

Two more flags.

Each is a fact read straight from the app. The same checks run on every app we scan. Only the ones that apply here are shown.

It declares cross-app tracking

Its own App Store label says it tracks you across other companies apps and websites using your advertising identifier.

It sends analytics to a company in Germany

Adjust is a Germany company. Its analytics SDK is built into the app.

The evidence

What it's built from.

All 19 SDKs in the app, grouped by what they are for. 5 are third-party trackers.

2advertising

1attribution

2analytics

14standard libraries

5 of the 19 are third-party trackers. The rest are the app's own code and standard open-source building blocks.

Show the full SDK list

Other third partiesadvertising

AppHarbr Ad Quality · Amazon Publisher Services (DTB)

Messaging SDKMessaging

Braze · Braze UI

AdjustAttribution · Germany

Adjust Signature

Standard libraries14 · 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 v27.6.0, 2026-04-03.

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.