Briar

SOCIAL & MESSAGING

LAST UPDATED 27 AUG 2026

OF 100

PARANOIA SCORE

WHAT THE POLICIES SAY

Briar is a free and open-source (GPLv3) peer-to-peer encrypted messenger for Android, with a beta desktop client, built by a small volunteer team led by Michael Rogers and governed by a self-appointed board of four named members; it has been funded over the years by grants from the Open Technology Fund, the Prototype Fund, the NLnet Foundation and others. It has no central server: messages sync directly between devices over Tor, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, an account is a nickname and password stored only on the device, and the project's privacy policy states it has no access to the content or metadata of communications and collects nothing about how Briar is used beyond optional, encrypted feedback and crash reports and seven-day website logs. Caveats include Android-only availability, Bluetooth/Wi-Fi discovery permissions that expose physical proximity, high battery use from always-on Tor, and a July 2026 announcement that the project is unfunded and in maintenance mode, shipping only essential security fixes. A 2017 Cure53 audit predates the covered window; in 2023 ETH Zurich researchers responsibly disclosed three security issues, which Briar fixed and documented publicly, and no breach or regulatory action was found.

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RECEIPTS

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COLLECTION

The Briar user manual states that creating an account requires only a chosen nickname and password — no phone number or email — and warns that the account is stored on the device, not in the cloud, so it cannot be recovered if the app is uninstalled or the password forgotten.

briarproject.org ↗

COLLECTION

Privacy Guides lists Briar on its Real-Time Communication recommendations page, whose minimum criteria include open-source clients, not requiring personal identifiers such as phone numbers or emails to be shared with contacts, and end-to-end encryption by default; the page describes Briar as connecting to other clients over Tor, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

privacyguides.org ↗

COLLECTION

Briar's privacy policy states the project has no access to the content or metadata of communications, will not modify the app to enable such access, and does not collect any information about how Briar is used or who uses it — the only exceptions being website logs deleted after seven days and voluntary feedback or crash reports, which are encrypted before sending; the account itself exists only on the user's device.

briarproject.org ↗

[2026-07-13] · COLLECTION

Briar's Google Play listing (updated 2026-07-13) carries a developer-supplied Data safety declaration stating the app may collect Location, Personal info and two other data types, that data is encrypted in transit and deletion can be requested, and that no data is shared with third parties; the listing describes the developer as a small non-profit team and links the privacy policy and source code. The 'may collect' declaration sits uneasily with the policy's no-collection statement and is flagged for review.

play.google.com ↗

OWNERSHIP TRANSPARENCY

Briar's About page names the core team (Michael Rogers, who started the project, Eleanor Saitta, Torsten Grote, Julian Dehm, Sebastian, Mikolai Gütschow, Nico Alt and Paul), lists past contributors, states the project is governed by a voluntary board, and lists its funders as the Small Media Foundation, the Open Internet Tools Project, Access Now, the Open Technology Fund, the Prototype Fund, Internews, the NLnet Foundation, the Next Generation Internet programme, the ISC Project and eQualit.ie; no funding amounts or legal entity are stated.

briarproject.org ↗

OWNERSHIP TRANSPARENCY

The Briar repository's licence file releases the code under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later and names Sublime Software Ltd as the copyright holder for 2011–2014, the project's early corporate origin; the F-Droid listing likewise records the licence as GPL v3.0 or later.

code.briarproject.org ↗

[2023-04-25] · OWNERSHIP TRANSPARENCY

Briar's Governance page publishes the project's rule — an annually self-appointed board of no more than five members that sets and implements policy by majority vote — and names the board members as of 25 April 2023 as Nico Alt, Julian Dehm, Torsten Grote and Michael Rogers; the page is licensed CC BY-SA and describes no registered legal entity.

briarproject.org ↗

SHARING

Briar's privacy policy discloses the only outbound data flows: voluntary feedback and crash reports (optionally with email and device information) that are encrypted before sending, used only to improve the app, and whose email addresses will not be shared with anyone else; anonymised excerpts may be quoted on the public development site, and the project's mailing lists are hosted by SourceForge under SourceForge's privacy policy with public archives.

briarproject.org ↗

SHARING

Briar's design page states the app does not rely on a central server — messages are synchronized directly between users' devices over Tor, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or memory cards — so there is no operator-held message store or relationship graph that could be shared with or compelled from a third party.

briarproject.org ↗

[2017-07-21] · TRACK RECORD

Briar's 2017-07-21 beta press release states that an independent security audit by Cure53 — six testers over thirteen days examining Briar's cryptographic protocols and code — was published alongside the beta and that all issues found were addressed; this audit is disclosed as history because it predates the five-year window and no newer published audit was found.

briarproject.org ↗

[2023-05-24] · TRACK RECORD

On 2023-05-24 Briar disclosed that ETH Zürich researchers Yuanming Song and Prof. Kenny Paterson had responsibly reported three security issues in February 2023 — an invalid-message crash, message duplication in blogs/forums/groups, and a poorly designed cryptographic handshake that Tor's onion-service encryption rendered non-exploitable; two were fixed in 1.4.22 and the third in 1.5.3, no in-the-wild exploitation was reported, and the team apologised and said it had requested an independent audit of the whole protocol stack.

briarproject.org ↗

[2026-07-09] · TRACK RECORD

In a post dated 2026-07-09 the Briar team states the project is in maintenance mode — still active but making only essential security updates and bugfixes — after acknowledging it had no funding, could work on Briar only in spare time, and had at one point decided to shut down before reversing that decision; it lists unresolved issues including high battery usage, unreliable background operation on Android, missing account backup and file attachments, and difficult contact-adding and offline UX.

briarproject.org ↗

TRACKING TECH

The Briar repository README states the project provides docker images so anyone can verify that the published APK binaries contain nothing but the publicly available source code (reproducible builds), and links the source, wiki, manual and privacy policy.

code.briarproject.org ↗

TRACKING TECH

Briar's 'How it works' page states that Tor is used to prevent eavesdroppers from learning which users are talking to each other, that each user's contact list is encrypted and stored on her own device, and that all communication between devices is encrypted end-to-end; the page also publishes the adversary model the design is meant to resist.

briarproject.org ↗

[2026-07-15] · TRACKING TECH

The F-Droid listing for Briar 1.5.19 (added 2026-07-15) states the build is signed by the original developer and guaranteed to correspond to the published source tarball, and lists the app's permissions, including advertising to and discovering nearby Bluetooth devices, interacting with nearby Wi-Fi devices, precise location in the foreground, and running at startup — permissions the offline mesh feature needs but which broadcast the device's presence to nearby peers.

f-droid.org ↗

DATA SOURCES

Privacy Guides (www.privacyguides.org)

CC BY-SA · PRIVACYGUIDES.ORG ↗

Claims are summarized from these sources and may be edited from the original. Text adapted from a CC BY-SA source is shared under CC BY-SA.

LAST REVIEWED 2026-08-27 · METHODOLOGY v1.7