Viber Privacy Policy | Viber

[Last Updated: March 22, 2022  – What changed?]

As part of our mission to spread good vibes, we want you to be able to share the things that matter to you most with your friends, family and anyone else around you. It’s important to us that you feel comfortable and trust us with your data when using the Viber Services (as detailed under Viber’s Terms of Service). Please take a few minutes to read this Privacy Policy, so that you understand what data we collect, what we do with it and why, how we protect it and what are your rights in relation to this data.

In general, we collect data that allows us to provide you with an optimal experience while using our Services. This includes, for example, some basic benefits like allowing other users to see the name and picture you choose to show and the more advanced ones, like processing your registration and financial data to allow you to purchase our paid solutions, if you choose to use them. It also helps us to keep our Services clear of fraud and spam, and it allows us to get a unique understanding of what additional services may be useful to you, in addition to other purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy.

Starting with Viber 6.0, Viber’s core features are secured with end-to-end encryption: Viber one-on-one calls, one-on-one messages, group messages, private media sharing and linked devices. This means that the encryption keys are stored only on your devices and no one, not even Viber itself, has access to them. To learn more about Viber Encryption, follow this link: http://www.viber.com/en/security.

If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the UK, or you are a California resident and the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR“) or California Privacy Protection Act (“CCPA“) applies to you, as applicable, additional information that supplements this Privacy Policy is available at: EU Region Privacy Notice; CCPA Notice.

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 The Data We Collect

The operation and use of our Viber App and Services involves collection of personal data, where the types of such data depend on the type of Service and interaction with us. For example, when you sign up for Viber, you directly provide us personal data. We also automatically collect certain personal data from our users’ device. We explain which information we collect and how we collect it below.

The types of personal data collected through use of our Services, including App and website, are listed below. We note that, some types of personal data we collect are required for all Viber Services (for example, your phone number), some types may be required solely for certain Services or features you decide to use (for example, Viber Pay), and some are optional, and subject to your discretion (for example, your photo).

We do not read, listen or store your messages and/ or calls made privately:

We wish to clarify that we do not read or listen to the content of your messages and/or calls made privately via Viber and we do not store those messages (including any media files transferred therein) once they have been delivered to their destination (which on average takes less than one second). If for some reason the message was not delivered to its destination within up to 2 weeks, it will be deleted from our servers. We note that we allow you the option to back up your chat history data on your own external data backup service (like iCloud or Google Drive) – see HERE for more info on backup.

Data provided or collected through registration & under your Viber account or participation in Viber’s activities:

Geolocation data:

Financial information provided or collected through your use of our limited financial services (e.g., payment solutions), or purchased subscription and offers:

Data we collect automatically from your device, e.g., data collected using cookies and other device identifying technologies (Cookies and Tracking Technologies):

For more information regarding how we and our partners use cookies, as well as your choices and controls, please see our Viber Ads, Cookies and Tracking Technologies Policy.

Data we collect or receive from other sources and inferred data:

User Submitted Content:

If you choose to participate in Viber’s activities (e.g., contests), or as part of your participation in communities/channels/bots’ activities available on Viber, you may voluntarily publish, submit or post content such as videos, images, graphics, text, videos, etc. which may include personal data (e.g., an image of a person).

Data we collect from your communications with us, including support, customer services and other inquiries:

If you choose to contact us through any means of communications we make available, you may provide us with certain information such as your contact details (e.g., name, email, phone number, mobile carrier, country – mainly where you are not a user of our Services) and other information you voluntarily wish to provide (mainly, related to the issue you wish us to address or resolve). We will further store our contact history and correspondence with you.

Non users’ data:

Mobile phone number and contact name, as saved on a Viber user’s phone address book:  we may process your mobile phone number even if you are not a Viber user, in the event that your phone number was included in our existing user’s address book that has been provided to us (and subject to such user providing us with approval to access the device address book). We will also save the name it was saved under by our user. We do it to show our user who in their contacts is already using our Services and who is not, to allow users find and communicate with their contacts who are users or who are not users in a more efficient way, and solely for as long as a relevant Viber user’s account exists on Viber. In the event you will become an active user, the existing users whose phone book included your number, will be notified that you have joined the Service and you will be automatically added to their App’s contact list.

If you are not a Viber user and would like to exclude your phone number, please contact us at https://help.viber.com/en/contact.

Business partners data:

When you communicate with us for business purposes as a business partner of ours, we will save your contact data provided by you (names, phone number, email, address etc.), as well as any correspondence we have had. We use trusted third-party providers to manage the maintenance and storage of such data.

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 How We Use Your Data

At Viber, we use your personal data to provide you with the best possible Service. This includes administering your account, customizing and improving the Service we offer, processing payments, serving ads and marketing campaigns, providing you with support and for compliance and safety reasons. We explain below the purposes for which we collect and use your personal data, as well as the types of data we use for each purpose.

You can find here information regarding the purposes for which we collect and use your personal data.

If you use our Services from the EEA or the UK, we must have a lawful basis to process your personal data. Please review our EU Region Privacy Notice for detailed information.

Authentication and Account Administration:

Viber uses different types of your personal data to create and administrate your Viber account in order to enable you to register, log in, activate and use the Services. This includes, for example:

The types of data we will use for such purpose will mainly include (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above):

Provide our Services Communication & Content Features (messaging, voice and video calls, group chats, communities, channels, bots, chat extensions, explore screen, stickers, Viber lenses, etc.), and enabling backups:

Viber uses different types of personal data in order to operate, provide and deliver to you our Services, including communication features. This includes, for example:

The types of data we will use for such purpose will mainly include (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above):

As stated above, your messages will not be stored by us once they have been delivered.

Enabling Your Use of Viber Purchased Services (Viber Out Credit & Subscriptions) and Viber Chatbot Payments:

Viber uses different types of personal data in order to enable your use of the Viber Out Credit or purchase of subscriptions on our App or website, including for verification purposes. This includes, for example, sharing your email address with our third-party Payment Service Providers, to enable the processing of your payments. Your credit card number will be provided by you directly to the applicable Payment Service Provider and Viber will not have access to this data. We will further store a log that will record your purchase for operational and fraud detection purposes, and such log will include your IP address or other device identifier.

We also use certain types of data to enable you to interact and pay to third party merchants through your use of the Viber Chatbot Payments.  This data will be used solely for fulfilling our role as an intermediary and we will share with Google Pay or Apple Pay or any other linked payments provider. The confirmation of the payment is provided directly to the merchant and Viber does not receive or share any payment data or registration data from Apple Pay nor Google Pay. Note that, your use of Apple Pay and Google Pay, including their use of your data, is subject to their respective terms and privacy policy, which can be found here: Google Pay, Apple Pay.

The types of data we will use for such purpose will mainly include (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above):

Enabling Your Use of Viber Pay Services:  

As part of the Viber Pay service, Viber provides limited financial services via a licensed partner. In order to provide this, we use certain information and share it with the licensed partner. This includes, for example:

The types of data we will use for such purpose will mainly include (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above):

Enabling and Managing Your Participation in Contests & Marketing Activities:

If you voluntarily choose to participate in contest and other marketing activities offered by Viber, we will use different types of personal data, depending on the applicable activity, in order to enable your participation and operate such activities. This includes, for example:

The types of data we will use for such purpose will mainly include (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above):

Improving and Customizing the Service and Analytics of Viber Activity:

Viber uses different types of personal data in order to improve, enhance and evaluate the Services, as well as customize the Services. This may include, for example:

The types of data we will use for such purpose will mainly include (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above):

 Marketing Communications with Viber’s Users & Location based Offers:

Viber uses different types of personal data in order to contact you with marketing and offers relating to products offered by the Viber Services, and our third party trusted partners, in line with applicable laws. This may include, for example:

Please note that even after you have chosen to unsubscribe (see how you can do it in “Your Choices” section), we may send you service-related communications, including administrative messages that relate to your use of the Services.

The types of data we will use for such purpose will mainly include (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above):

Advertising:

Viber uses different types of personal data in order to provide our advertising services (meaning, to enable the display of advertisements, including personalized advertisements provided by third party advertisers, in our App and Services), to measure and optimize the performance of ads and deliver more relevant ads. This may include, for example:

Additional information (including how to opt-out of data collection through the use of cookies) is available on our Viber Ads, Cookies & Tracking Technologies Policy.

The types of data we will use for such purpose will mainly include (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above):

Customer Service:

Viber uses different types of personal data in order to provide customer service and customer support. This may include, for example:

The types of data we will use for such purpose will mainly include (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above):

Safety, Security & Fraud Prevention:

Viber uses different types of personal data for security purposes such as fraud and spam prevention. This may include, for example:

The types of data we will use for such purpose will mainly include (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above):

B2B Communications and Engagements:

We will use Business Partners Data (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above) for the purpose of communicating with you, or as otherwise needed to facilitate our engagement, as well as to send you our marketing offers. You have the ability to opt out of our direct marketing emails at any time (see how you can do it in “Your Choices” section).

Provide Service to Existing Users:

We will store and use Non-User Data (as detailed in the “Data We Collect” section above) which includes non-Viber users’ phone number (and names under which they were saved by Viber users) in the event such contact was included in our user’s address book that has been provided to us, and for the purpose of showing our user who in their contacts is already using our Services and who is not, to allow the user find and communicate with their contacts who are users in a more efficient way. If you are not a Viber user and would like to be excluded from such processing, please contact us at https://help.viber.com/en/contact

Defend our Rights, Enforce our Policies & Compliance with Legal Obligations and Public Interests:

Viber may use and share different types of personal data, and depending on the circumstances, for the purpose of defending our rights and enforcing our polices, terms and agreements, where it is necessary to comply with legal obligations to which we are subject to and cooperation with regulators and law enforcement bodies (where there is a valid legal request such as binding order), as well as in very limited and rare circumstances, where we find it necessary and essential for the purpose of protecting your or third party’s life safety and security as well as humanitarian purposes. This may include, for example:

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What Other Users Can See

When you use our Services, other Viber users can see certain data about you, for example, the fact that you are a Viber user or a user of certain Viber Services, the content you voluntarily share, your profile information (subject to your settings), your connection status, etc., as we detail and explain below.

Other users can see on Viber the following data about you:

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 How We Share Your Personal Data

We share data with third parties, including our corporate family and with trusted companies that help us provide our Services in compliance with strict data security and privacy practices, as well as other third parties such as our advertising partners, and third parties offering services through our App. We may also share personal data in limited circumstances where we are required to do so under applicable law. You can find here information about the categories of such third-party recipients, as well as the purpose for which the personal data is shared with such third parties.

Your data is kept safe with us, but we do share your personal data with third parties we trust, solely as follows:

The Viber Corporate Family:

We may share the data we collect about you with the Viber corporate family, including our parent company, Rakuten Group Inc., and its and our affiliates (as listed HERE) and our subsidiaries, for the following purposes:

For users registering to Viber from November 20, 2019 – details provided during your registration will be shared with Rakuten group to create the Rakuten account and/or to link your Rakuten account with your Viber account. In addition, the same will apply to users in Japan, who decided to link their email to their Viber account. Your Rakuten account or any activity related to your use of Rakuten services is governed by Rakuten ID Privacy Policy.

Our Service Providers:

We share your personal data with our trusted service providers and business partners that perform business operations for us on our behalf (as data processors) and pursuant to our instructions. This includes the following types of service providers:

Where we share information with services providers and partners, we ensure they only have access to such information that is strictly necessary in order for us to provide the Services. These parties are required to secure the data they receive and to use the data for pre-agreed purposes only, while ensuring compliance with all applicable data protection regulations (such service providers may use other non-personal data for their own benefit).

Third-Parties Offering Service Through our App:

As part of Viber’s Services, we allow third parties to create communities and channels on Viber, and develop through the use of Viber’s API their own bots, chat extensions and integrate into Viber explore screen in order to communicate with Viber users (“Third Party Communications“). In the event you voluntarily choose to interact with the Third-Party Communications through your use of the Services, such third parties may receive certain data about the user, such as your user’s name, photo, country, some device data and Viber unique ID. These third parties are not processing the data on our behalf, meaning, their use of your data shall be subject to their policies and privacy practices.

Advertising Partners:

To enable the limited advertisements on our Services, we may share device identifiers (i.e., an advertising identifier associated with your device) with our third-party advertising partners (listed HERE), along with certain of your device data (e.g. language preference), age range, inferred gender, country, city, reduced IP address (or GPS location data if you allowed us in your settings) and certain technical or aggregated data about you and the device you are using. This includes partners managing our advertising placements (Rakuten included) and also advertisers themselves and their agencies or third parties managing their advertising demands. Your unique advertising identifier is created by your mobile device’s operating system and you can change it or choose not to share it at any time. If you want to know more, read our Viber Ads, Cookies & Tracking Technologies Policy.

Legal and Law Enforcement:

Subject to our strict data security and privacy practices and without compromising our end-to-end encryption, we may disclose certain types of your data, including, and depending on the circumstances,  Activity Data, Identifiers and your phone address book, to law enforcement, governmental agencies, or authorized third parties, in response to a verified request relating to terror acts, criminal investigations or alleged illegal activity or any other activity that may expose us, you, or any other Viber user to legal liability, and solely to the extent needed to comply with such purpose.

Corporate Transactions:

In the event of a corporate transaction (e.g., sale of a substantial part of our business, merger, consolidation or asset sale) we will share the data we store with our acquiring company. We will obligate the acquiring company to assume the rights and obligations as described in this Privacy Policy (including this notice), and we will notify you of such corporate changes in your data processing.

Limited Payment Services:

If you use our Viber Pay services, we will share with our third-party payment processor KYC related data such as your name, date of birth, contact details, country, etc.

If you use our Viber Chatbot Payment, we will share with Google Pay or Apple Pay or any other linked payments provider the following information: (i) name of the payment service provider merchant; (ii) price of the items purchased and currency; and (iii) the description of the items purchased. The confirmation of the payment is provided directly to the merchant and Viber does not receive or share any payment data or registration data from Apple Pay nor Google Pay. Note that, your use of Apple Pay and Google Pay, including their use of your data, is subject to their respective terms and privacy policy which can be found here: Google Pay, Apple Pay.

If you use our Viber Out Credit and subscriptions, we will share your email address with our payment processor, for the purpose of verification and fraud detection.

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 International Data Transfers

Due to our global operations, your personal data will be shared with Viber corporate family, as well as our service providers and business partners around the world. We take measures to ensure the transfer of such data will provide sufficient safeguards. These measures include compliance with Binding Corporate Rules of the Rakuten Group, as well as contractual commitments of our partners and service providers.  We further explain below why we transfer personal data, the measures we take to ensure your personal data will be secure upon transfer, and your rights in this regard.

Due to our global nature, your personal data may need to be processed in countries where data protection and privacy regulations may not offer the same level of protection as in your home country. Depending on the territory from which you use our Services, we may store and process all categories of your personal data on our computers located globally, including in the United States, Asia, Europe, Russia, Australia and Brazil. In addition, our communications servers are located globally in order to enable the operation of our communications servicesand we use service providers that may be located in various locations.

Transfers of your personal data will be made in accordance with applicable data protection laws, and among others, we have put in place appropriate safeguards (such as contractual commitments) in accordance with applicable legal requirements to ensure that your personal data is adequately protected.

Furthermore, as part of the Rakuten Group, Viber relies on the Rakuten Group Binding Corporate Rules to legitimize international data transfers within the Group. The Rakuten Group Binding Corporate Rules can be found at https://corp.rakuten.co.jp/privacy/en/bcr.html.

When personal data collected within the EEA is transferred outside the EEA, we will take the steps necessary to ensure that the transfer of such data provides sufficient safeguards, and you may exercise your rights, where applicable, to receive information on such transfer mechanism, as further detailed under our EU Region Privacy Notice.

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 Data Retention

As we have explained above, we process personal data for various purposes. Accordingly, we only keep personal data as long as required to fulfill the purpose for which the data was collected, or, in some instance, where we have other necessities to retain the personal data, for example, where required by law. We explain below the criteria used by us to determine the retention of your personal data (meaning, for how long we store it and when we delete it, aligned with the type of data and purpose of collection).

The criteria used by us to determine Viber’s retention periods are as follows:

If you decide to delete your Viber account, the CDRs and communications with our customer support will be retained as detailed above, and we will further retain records of purchases you have made (using Viber Pay, purchasing subscriptions, etc.), for the periods required under applicable laws, or as needed in accordance with our fraud monitoring program.

All other types of data related to your Viber account will be deleted, unless we are required to further retain the data, subject to the criteria detailed below. We may keep activity data on a non-identifiable basis to improve our Services. Your posts on channels and communities may remain available if you do not delete them. Please note that deletion of the App (i.e., uninstall the App from your device) will not delete your account. Please see information and instruction regarding your account deletion HERE.

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 Your Choices & Controls

The personal data is yours – the choice is yours too on how to customize your Viber experience.  Viber users enjoy certain choices and controls related to their personal data. We explain below the controls and choices provided by Viber and how you may exercise them, including deletion of messages, privacy settings, the visibility of your online status, limit what other users can see, unsubscribe from marketing materials and opt-out of certain personalization features.

Viber provides you with certain choice and controls you may exercise, related to your personal data, as follows:

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 Your Rights Related to Your Personal Data

Subject to local law, you may have certain rights regarding the personal data that Viber has collected about you. Such rights may include (depending on your jurisdiction as well as  the type of data and the purpose for which the data was collected or retained) the right to know which types of data we collect and why we collect it (as we detail under this notice), the right to request rectification of your personal data, the right to request us to delete your personal data, the right to opt-out of certain data collection,  the right to access your personal data, the right to withdraw your consent, as well as the right to lodge a complaint to a supervisory authority. We further explain below the operational meaning of each such right, as well as when and how you may exercise your right.

Viber respects your ability to exercise certain rights with regards to your personal data collected and stored. In some areas and jurisdictions, such principal rights may include all or some of the following rights:

If you are using our Services from the EEA, UK or you are a California resident, you might have additional rights related to your personal data. Please see our EU Region Privacy Notice and CCPA Notice, as applicable.

We provide you with the ability to independently exercise certain choices and controls in connection with your personal data – please see details under the “Your Choices” paragraph above. If you wish to further exercise your rights, please contact us as specified under “Contact Us” section below. We will contact you if we need additional information from you in order to honor your requests.

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 Data Security and Storage

At Viber, we take information security seriously and have strict security measures in place to ensure that your account and your personal data are safe. Here you can find information regarding the security measures we have in place.

We implement technical and organizational measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk to the personal data we process. These measures are aimed at ensuring the ongoing integrity and confidentiality of personal data. We evaluate these measures on a regular basis to ensure the security of the processing. To learn more about our security measures, follow this link: http://www.viber.com/en/security.

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 Third-Party Websites, Apps and Back-Ups

Our App may contain links to other third-party websites or you may access Apps from a third-party website. We are not responsible for the data collection by such third parties, and their privacy practices and polices shall govern your personal data processed by them.

Third parties’ websites and apps:

If you access or Services and App from any third-party website or other digital source, or access any third-party site from our Services and App, note that, your use and the personal data collected will be subject to such third party’s practices and we do not monitor, nor responsible for the privacy practices of these third parties.

Back-ups:

If you voluntarily choose to back up your Viber conversations, such back-ups are made by independent third parties and kept on your device’s service according to operating system’s (Google/ iOS) terms and policies and are no longer protected by Viber’s end-to-end encryption nor Viber has any control over it. This is also true for using Viber Desktop – where your conversations are kept on your personal computer under your security definitions.

TrueDepth APIs:

Starting the end of June 2021 we added a new face lens feature that uses camera capabilities in order to add graphic elements on the user’s face. Some lenses can make use of TrueDepth API. TrueDepth API is only active when those lenses are running. It is a very specific feature and none of the Viber lenses will be using it at the moment. Types of lenses that might use it are virtual try-on, which we don’t have. Viber does not collect any data from these sensors or ever store it anywhere. The data never leaves the user’s device (so cannot be, and is not, shared by Viber with third parties) and is only used for lens operation.

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 Children’s Privacy

Our Services are not intended for children under the age of 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal data from individuals under this age.

Our Services are not intended for children under the age of 13. Therefore, we do not knowingly collect personal data via our websites, applications, services, or tools from anyone under 13. In the EEA, certain default privacy settings will be /applied to users under the age of 16 and can only be changed if the legal guardian instructs so in writing.

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 Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do (except for minor tweaks), we will notify you via our App and website.

We may modify or update this privacy notice from time to time.

If we change this privacy policy (except for technical tweaks), we will notify you of the changes. Where changes to this Privacy Policy will have a fundamental impact on the nature of the collection or use of your personal data, or otherwise have a substantial impact on you, we will give you sufficient advance notice so that you have the opportunity to exercise your rights. The last modification date of this privacy policy will be reflected in the “Last Updated” header above.

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 Contact Us

We are committed to working with you to obtain a fair resolution of any complaint or concern about privacy. If, however, you believe that we have not been able to assist with your complaint or concern, you have the right to make a complaint to your local data protection authority or to the data protection authority of Luxembourg using their website https://cnpd.public.lu/en.html.

In the event you read this policy in any language other than English, you agree that in the event of any discrepancies, the English version shall prevail.

Current Privacy Policy PDF Version Viber Privacy Policy March 2022

Previous Privacy Policy PDF Version Viber Privacy Policy November 2019

Previous Policy PDF Version Viber Privacy Policy May 2018

Previous Policy PDF Version Viber Privacy Policy March 2017

Previous Policy PDF Version Viber Privacy Policy September 2016

Previous Policy PDF Version  Viber Privacy Policy June 2014