WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat have consistently taken the top spots when it comes to the most-used instant messengers (IMs) globally.
Over the last decade or so, these platforms have competed fiercely for market share across countries, constantly one-upping each other in terms of features to emerge as the preferred iOS or Android app of users.
While these apps’ early meteoric rise occurred in parallel in most regions, something drastically different began happening once the regulatory authorities and governments began catching up to the power of these IMs to cause:
- National security-related complications
- Data breaches
- Consumer privacy violations
- Compliance lapses, especially in highly-regulated industries
Increasingly, IM use began to regionalize, with each country or market overwhelmingly adopting one preferred messaging platform while restricting or outright banning the others if not shunning them to the point of irrelevance. This transformation has been slow, led by user apathy, government / regulator intervention, or both, but the results of the IM regionalization trend seem to be something set in stone for the foreseeable future.
Charting the Road to IM Regionalization
While local preferences have played a significant role in shaping the adoption of IMs across markets, governments and regulators have certainly had an oversized influence.
WeChat domination in China
One of the biggest instances of IM regionalization is WeChat’s domination in its home market of China. The app has certainly emerged as a strong favorite among consumers and corporate professionals, especially as a feature-rich enterprise messaging service, but the country’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration, has certainly done its part to speed up the adoption. Case in point, the regulator recently had Apple remove WhatsApp and Threads from its iPhones in China over apparent violations of the country’s cybersecurity laws and objectionable content circulating about the government.
It is worth mentioning that even before the official ban of such apps, the adoption rate was low, due to what is deemed the “Great Firewall”, which is a combination of regulations and technology used by the government to screen and regulate internet traffic from outside the region.
India’s IM crackdowns
China’s neighbor India is also no stranger to major IM exits; way back in 2020, the country banned WeChat citing national security concerns and worries about unauthorized data transmission.
Notably, the country is also in the midst of a legal battle with WhatsApp and its parent company Meta over its Information Technology Rules enacted in 2021 requiring social media platforms to be able to trace chats and essentially compromise the end-to-end encryption.
EU’s Data Privacy Enforcement
Undoubtedly, the European Union, with its strict rules on data privacy and regulatory compliance, has also cracked down on IMs. WhatsApp has seemingly faced most of the ire of the regulators over allegations of its non-compliance with GDPR rules. In one of the most significant cases, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined the company $267 million.
US regulators join the party with a bang
The most significant of the IM crackdowns took place in the US, with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission handing out penalties worth nearly $2 billion to major financial institutions for their employees using unapproved communication channels that weren’t supervised. As part of the WhatsApp fines, nearly a dozen firms were penalized.
While the EU and US cases didn’t lead to any country-wide bans or restrictions on these instant messengers, it has raised serious questions among regulated firms when it comes to the optimal approach to communication compliance, which has suddenly been complicated due to uncertainty about IM use.
The SEC’s self-imposed retractions may explain all this
Noticing the recent moves by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is all that is needed to discern why countries or various regions have had their trust issues with IMs.
Taking a page out of its guidelines for financial firms, the US regulator has restricted employees from texting via third-party IMs on work phones. The ban extends to SMS and iMessage texts, which a spokesperson clarified was
“to lower the risk that our systems could be compromised and to enhance recordkeeping”.
The crackdown on IMs with disappearing messages and end-to-end encryption within the SEC points to why there is a larger trend of regional regulators or governments attempting similar restrictions. There is a massive push across regions for compliance with regulations for data localization and industry standards for recordkeeping and the desire to protect citizens’ privacy, in addition to the national interest.
What all this chaos means for compliance teams
There is no telling where the chips will fall when it comes to which region or regulator will have a problem with which instant messenger. At the moment, there are major legal battles and regulator-led investigations underway over various features in instant messengers. An especially noteworthy one is the FTC allegations that Amazon execs used Signal, a privacy-focused IM with a disappearing messages feature, to avoid preserving conversations pertinent to an anti-trust legal battle.
Consequently, the key trend for compliance teams to make note of is the uncertainty and fast-changing compliance requirements. To ensure that your firm isn’t caught off guard, especially if you are a regulated firm operating in multiple regions, compliance teams need to ensure:
- Awareness when it comes to which instant messengers are preferred by employees across regions
- The preparation of a comprehensive device and IM use policy that covers the types of communication channels that can be used, what apps can be accessed for business calls and texts, and what can be said over them
- Clarity over local regulations and industry requirements when it comes to WhatsApp recordkeeping regulations and other archiving norms, including the expected retention period
- The implementation of a system to capture business-related communication for presentation to the regulators in times of audits
- The secure upkeep of the texts and other conversations between co-workers or with clients and prospects in a tamper-proof manner, protected by access controls
Irrespective of region-specific instant messenger preferences of employees, TeleMessage can bolster your compliance efforts by capturing texts across platforms in real-time and securing them in a SOC 2-compliant manner for as long as needed. Crucially, the network archiver can retain the text messages of both remote/ hybrid and onsite employees using either company-issued or BYOD phones.
To understand more about how TeleMessage can help you, contact us for a demo.
About TeleMessage
TeleMessage captures and retains mobile content, including mobile SMS messages, voice calls WhatsApp, and WeChat conversations from corporate or BYOD mobile phones to ensure compliance with various data protection regulations. The messages are securely and reliably retained within TeleMessage servers or forwarded to your choice of archiving data storage vendor.
Our mobile archiving products securely record content from mobile carriers and mobile devices for various ownership models (BYOD, CYOD, and employer-issued). With our multiple archiving solutions, you can always find the right tools or blend for your requirements:
