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Berlin (dpa) - There is movement in the Internet messenger market.

Competitors of the market leader Whatsapp have grown above average since the change in the service's privacy policy.

The Swiss messenger provider Threema announced that the daily number of downloads had "multiplied" since last Friday.

"In the app stores in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, Threema is number 1 in the app charts for payment apps," said a spokesman.

There were similar reports from Telegram and Signal.

Telegram boss Pawel Durow said on his platform on Wednesday that in the first week of January Telegram exceeded the mark of 500 million monthly active users.

“After that we continued to grow: In the last 72 hours alone, Telegram added 25 million new users.

These new users came from all over the world - 38 percent from Asia, 27 percent from Europe, 21 percent from Latin America and 8 percent from the Middle East and Africa. "

This is a significant increase compared to last year, when 1.5 million new users registered daily.

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WhatsApp competitor Signal also benefited from a recommendation by Elon Musk.

The Tesla boss wrote on Twitter last Thursday: “Use Signal”.

After that, the signal server repeatedly failed to register new customers under the onslaught.

With more than two billion users, WhatsApp is the world's most successful service, followed by Facebook Messenger (1.3 billion) and the Chinese service WeChat (1.1 billion).

Recently, a changed WhatsApp privacy policy was controversially discussed, which also deals with the sharing of data with the parent company Facebook.

However, there are no changes in the revised directive applicable to the EU and the UK that affect the sharing of data with other Facebook companies.

It looks different globally.

Because a different privacy policy applies to the rest of the world.

Outside of the EU, WhatsApp user data has been sent to Facebook for advertising purposes or to improve products - albeit since 2016.

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The trend that established online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Google are taking stronger action against extremists and conspiracy narratives also contributed to the rise of Telegram.

Telegram does little to ban false information or even criminal content from the platform.

However, this trend also ensures that quite a few Telegram users feel uncomfortable on the platform and migrate to Signal or Threema.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210113-99-08084 / 2

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