Messengers
XMPP privacy rating
XMPP, also known as Jabber, is an open standard for federated instant messaging maintained by the XMPP Standards Foundation, with many independent clients and servers.
Summary
XMPP scores 78 out of 100 (grade B) on the messengers criteria. It meets 5 of 7 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry, no ads or data sales, no phone number needed and decentralized. It partly meets end-to-end encrypted by default. It does not meet metadata protection.
Score 78 out of 100. How scoring works
Criteria
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Yes
Open source Weight 3 of 3
Is all the source code needed to run the product public?
Open standard (RFC 6120) with many open source clients and servers.
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Yes
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?
The standard defines no telemetry, and the xmpp.org site loads only its own scripts with no analytics.
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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?
Maintained by the non-profit XMPP Standards Foundation, funded by sponsors, with no ads.
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Partial
End-to-end encrypted by default Weight 3 of 3
Are all chats, including groups, end-to-end encrypted by default?
End-to-end encryption comes from the optional OMEMO extension; some clients enable it by default, but the core protocol does not.
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Yes
No phone number needed Weight 2 of 3
Can an account be created without a phone number?
Accounts are addresses of the form user@server; no phone number is involved.
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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)?
Servers store contact lists and see who talks to whom.
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Yes
Decentralized Weight 1 of 3
Can people run their own server or talk peer to peer?
Federated; anyone can run a server that talks to other servers.