List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

https://www.birdy.chat/blog/the-growing-list-of-european-organisations-that-ban-personal-messaging-apps-at-work

by rmesters • 15 days ago

45 61 15 days ago

birdy.chat

spwa4• 15 days ago

TLDR: yes, governments in favor of Chat Control legislation want to make absolutely sure it doesn't apply to them.

inigyou3• 15 days ago

Chat Control 1 or 2?

retired3• 15 days ago

Meanwhile in Spain I use WhatsApp to contact the municipality, the GP uses it to send my blood results and package delivery drivers ask me to share my location. I hate it.

mschild• 15 days ago

Why not delete it? I assume that if you don't have it, they offer some other form of communication with you?

amelius3• 15 days ago

Very funny.

reedciccio• 15 days ago

Yes, they do but they require walking to their office and deal with paper or call them during ever shrinking office hours. Take your poison.

tsimionescu2• 14 days ago

Would you rather they used Teams? Or what would be a better alternative? Phone / email?

retired3• 14 days ago

Some secure online portal would be nice for the GP or municipality.

The delivery issues can be solved by introducing a standardized address system for Spain but that would take decades to roll out. Some people I know don’t even have an address, they just use the land registry number. Or just the name of their village + surnames, which is typically good enough for the standard mail (but not good enough for DHL/UPS/DPD packages, their drivers want your location via WhatsApp)

dizhn• 14 days ago

The 2016 coup attempt in Turkey was organized entirely on whatsapp. All of the conversations were recovered from multiple phones too.

Yokohiii• 15 days ago

I don't understand why they put this up like it's working in their favor. Their website doesn't explain anything extraordinary that makes them different from the average chat app, except that it is europe based.

inigyou3• 15 days ago

What would possibly differentiate a chat app?

Almondsetat• 15 days ago

E2EE? F/OSS? P2P?

yeputons• 15 days ago

It works reliably and without surprises. Messages are not lost. No weird errors.

Features: easy to switch devices, including PC. File transfers. Video sharing. Audio-to-text conversion out of the box.

williamdclt• 15 days ago

I'm not reading anything in this article that seems to pretend like it's working in their favour?

It's just an article from a company about their industry, companies do that all the time for brand recognition, building trust (showing expertise in their domain), and educating potential customers about why they might need this sort of product (lead generation).

blitzar4• 15 days ago

If anything it is highlighting the pointlessness of any new messaging platform. Companies can and should lock down to the platform that comes with their subscription for everything else - and for all personal matters that is locked down with network effects by sms, whatsapp & wechat.

You could maybe make the case for a federated - email like - messaging service for inter company / party communications. Matrix basically ...

tsimionescu2• 14 days ago

Why would they need anything different? If they offer the same features as other chat apps, they can simply aim to compete on price (and/or on other non-functional attributes like performance, reliability, UX, social connection, etc).

benny_s• 15 days ago

At least for the financial institutions on this list, I can say they have no other choice. Regulation forces them to log everything to avoid insider trading, etc. Any communication outside of their internal systems can't be logged and is therefore a compliance risk.

sigmoid102• 15 days ago

GDPR guarantees a right to privacy even on work devices. I think you need to filter out personal messages if compliance requires logging.

JoeBOFH3• 15 days ago

As much as I prefer the European way of some items. I think the American way of treating the work computer as a company asset and just locking it down to an insane degree makes way more sense. Especially for areas like finance.

sib2• 15 days ago

Which is actually a good reason for entities subject to GDPR to forbid use of personal messaging apps on work devices... (And to forbid users to use work / official apps for personal messaging.)

raesene9• 15 days ago

It provides a right to privacy if the company allows personal messaging services on the device, but I don't think it provides a right to having personal messaging apps on the device(s).

Personally I think it's much cleaner to keep work stuff on your work device(s) and personal stuff on personal devices. The only place that gets sticky is where companies don't provide the device but want you to have work information on it (e.g. mobile phones)

Ekaros• 14 days ago

Not to forget many constitutions enshrining privacy of correspondence which extends to emails and instant messages. Lot of work done to poke holes on it but generally it still holds somewhat in many countries.

blitzar4• 15 days ago

Been a sackable offence for over a decade in finance, I can not fathom why other sectors have been so slow to enforce some basic standards.

Recording every call, message (and in my office - thing you said at your desk) is mostly used for conflict resolution - when counterparties disagree you go to the tapes and see what was said. From there my word is my bond, it is done.

weinzierl• 15 days ago

"ban personal messaging apps at work"

What does that even mean? I doubt you can forbid the usage of personal messaging apps except in very exceptional cases (like a court room).

On the other hand: Using personal messaging apps for work related information is a no-go anyway because of confidentiality agreements basically everyone signs.

rock_artist• 15 days ago

I also didn't fully understand if the context is:

- Ban ANY use of your personal chats / device at work (eg. your wife texts you to bring milk on the way home)

- Ban WORK communication (eg. My colleague don't understand recent commit I've made)

So the web really isn't explaining how things enforced or what is being done. I do know of some industries where you put your personal phone when entering specific locations or having stickers on cameras) but here I didn't fully understood the scope.

inemesitaffia• 15 days ago

Yahoo messenger/BBM used to be popular when I was in banking and that's where banking was done. Then confirmed via email.

Now the idea is all banking related stuff is done on approved devices and clients so you can deal with retention(more like deletion) and loss.

And no personal chat clients too. If you're low enough on the pole, you don't even get to keep your personal devices with you.

blitzar4• 15 days ago

Finance - no personal devices in the office and no personal (or unauthorised) messaging apps on your work devices.

wolvoleo8• 14 days ago

I've seen this too in a meta moderation center. They were real sticklers for this. Even personal headphones were not allowed.

I don't think this is legal in EU but for that kind of low-level work they tend to get away with that.

tecleandor• 15 days ago

Using personal messaging apps for work, for example, sending work related messages through WhatsApp or Telegram instead of using the proper corporate/official app.

You can forbid your employees to use non official apps to send work related messages for privacy, compliance, security and other reasons.

khurs• 14 days ago

Colleagues often setup WhatsApp groups etc so not on company slack/ms teams which will be monitored/loggged

nottorp2• 15 days ago

Of course, the consequence is you end up communicating for work on something like Teams instead of an usable chat app.

lossyalgo• 15 days ago

I refuse to install that malware on my phone. Upshot is that I don't get bothered by coworkers after hours.

throwa356262• 15 days ago

Like zoom where you chat disappears when the meeting is closed?

Or how about slack, that lives in an alternate reality where outlook calendar can be ignored?

nottorp2• 15 days ago

Teams will spam your outlook calendar :)

Slack is actually the best I've used for actual work comms so far. But then I mean communication, not calendar spam.

jeroenhd• 14 days ago

I'm living a glorious Outlook-free life at work. I'm glad that I don't need any of that crap. Maybe Slack is right to push people away from the Microsoft shitware that businesses stick to.

wolvoleo8• 14 days ago

True, Teams is a horrible tool. I wish we had something better but our company insists on keeping everything within the MS ecosystem.

basisword• 15 days ago

I'm surprised any company allows work to be done over employees personal apps/devices/numbers. If a colleague/boss contacted me about work via my personal number they'd be quickly told to never do it again.

ghaff• 14 days ago

It's not at all uncommon. I didn't have a usable work phone number for years given that, even when I technically had a desk, I was never there. I always used my personal phone and, for that matter, laptop for that matter.

Roark66• 15 days ago

What? 75% people use personal chats for work? I've never seen this in my over 20 years working in the UK, Poland and few other countries.

Personal messaging apps were always banned everywhere I worked.

KptMarchewa• 14 days ago

I have not for couple of years, but before covid I've worked in a well-known Polish company that was trying to force everyone to use at first HipChat, then some awful OSS chat. My team set up discord then.

s_dev• 14 days ago

I would imagine this is the exact problem they are trying to stop:

Civil servant accused of leaking Govt information to foreign intelligence service in Ireland

https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2026/0530/1576047-yevgen-mcke...

wolvoleo8• 14 days ago

Our company does the same. We are not allowed to use whatsapp for any work-related stuff.

This is for several reasons, mostly security and data-loss prevention. On Teams we can monitor with purview what happens with personal (customer!) data, which is mandatory here in europe under GDPR. We must take steps to ensure it is only processed by entities we have a data processing agreement with.

But we don't block people from using it for personal purposes of course. Whatsapp groups between colleagues to coordinate lunch options and nights out are super commonplace and perfectly fine. Even on work hardware (on android on the personal side of the phone, on iOS we just block copy/paste into whatsapp from corporate app).

I even saw our CISO using whatsapp web on his corp laptop. It's fine as long as it's not used for actual work. Here in EU it is mandatory to permit some level of personal activity even on work devices.

List of European organizations that have banned personal messaging apps at work

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