Messengers
Keybase privacy rating
End-to-end encrypted chat, group chat and file sharing tied to public-key identity proofs. Owned by Zoom since its acquisition, with little ongoing development.
Summary
Keybase scores 61 out of 100 (grade C) on the messengers criteria. It meets 3 of 8 criteria: no ads or data sales, end-to-end encrypted by default and no phone number needed. It partly meets open source, no trackers or telemetry and independent audit. It does not meet metadata protection and decentralized. It is based in the United States: Five Eyes member; subject to the US CLOUD Act.
Score 61 out of 100. How scoring works
Criteria
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Partial
Open source Weight 3 of 3
Is all the source code needed to run the product public?
Client apps are BSD-3-Clause; the server is closed source.
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Partial
No trackers or telemetry Weight 3 of 3
Are the website and apps free of third-party trackers, with any analytics anonymous and any telemetry off by default?
No third-party analytics are listed, but the service collects device and operating system analytics data with no documented opt-out.
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Yes
No ads or data sales Weight 2 of 3
Is the product funded without advertising, ad targeting or selling user data?
The privacy policy states Keybase will never run ads or sell user data.
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Partial
Independent audit Weight 2 of 3
Has an independent security or privacy audit been published within the last three years?
A full NCC Group report is public but is older than three years.
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Yes
End-to-end encrypted by default Weight 3 of 3
Are all chats, including groups, end-to-end encrypted by default?
All chats and team chats are end-to-end encrypted with per-device keys.
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Yes
No phone number needed Weight 2 of 3
Can an account be created without a phone number?
The privacy policy states Keybase never requires a phone number or an email address.
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No
Metadata protection Weight 2 of 3
Does the service minimize who-talks-to-whom metadata (for example sealed sender or no user identifiers)?
The central server sees which accounts and teams exchange messages.
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No
Decentralized Weight 1 of 3
Can people run their own server or talk peer to peer?
One central service run by Keybase; the server is not published for self-hosting.