Videocall apps and data security in times of pandemic

Videocall apps have proving to be essential in our lives during this quarantine. If before the pandemic they were already widely used all around the world, now with social distancing they are here to stay.

Through videocalls we have been able to have work meetings and to keep in touch with our loved ones.

The amount of users videocall apps has rapidly increased. In one hand, some well-known ones like WhatsApp and Skype have become more popular. In the other hand others like Houseparty and Zoom have emerged with a lot of strength.

The big controversy that has been detonated with the use of videocall apps is because of data protection and security concerns. Each minute in the world millions of users of these platforms share personal and work related information. These could be exposed to the risk of being stolen by hackers or used with lucrative ends.

In many of these apps you just need an email and a password to register. If a hacker has access to those credentials it could give him/her control over your information. The great danger is not only because of a possible ID theft, but also because they could steal your information and benefit from it by selling it or through blackmails.

Among the analyzed topics the privacy aspects were the most relevant: which data does the app gather, what does it do with it and if the communication is secure. For this the entity focused on what the companies say that their apps do with the data, for example, in their privacy declaration.

As a result of this investigation, the dutch organism determined that the most secure apps in terms of communication are: Jitsi, Signal and Talk de Nextcloud. These comply with the parameters related to the end-to-end encryption, the encryption of the traffic in transit so that third-parties cannot access; minimization of metadata use and they are open source.

In another section, the study concluded that Hangouts, Hangouts Meets, Messenger, Skype, Teams and WhatsApp are the platforms that store the most data from their users. This happens because they access contacts, location, as well as calls and other metadata from their users.

There are some basics that you should take into account when using videocall apps. These can be very useful to avoid hackers and data manipulation:

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