Roman Flepp, head of sales and marketing for Threema, told The Daily Swig: “The attempt by the authorities to significantly expand their sphere of influence in order to gain access to even more user data has thus finally failed.

Threema has nine million iOS and Android users worldwideĮxplaining the ruling, the Supreme Court judge intimated that if Threema were designated as a telecoms service provider, it would have necessitated applying the same legal definition to the vast majority of internet services, according to a Threema press release seen by The Daily Swig.

This would have seen the company legally classified as telco along with mainstream Swiss providers of mobile, broadband, and digital TV services like Swisscom or Sunrise.Ī complaint filed about the decision by Threema was granted a hearing by the Federal Administrative Court in mid-2020. The case stems from a decision made by the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP) in late 2018 that Threema should be designated as a telecoms service provider under the terms of the BÜPF (‘Federal Act on the Monitoring of Post and Telecommunications Traffic’). If compelled, the company would also have to identify certain users and share their data with law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Had the court overturned the original decision, Threema, which has more than nine million users, would have been legally obliged to collect and retain certain user data, in contravention with its privacy-oriented business model. Reaffirming a previous decision from a lower court, the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland ruled on April 29 that Threema should not be classified as a telecommunications service provider – only as a provider of ancillary communications services. Threema, the end-to-end- encrypted messaging service, has won a landmark court case in Switzerland’s highest court that means the Swiss company won’t be forced to betray its privacy-focused principles. Supreme Court judges affirm lower court decision to uphold privacy of its nine million users

Threema vs signal vs telegram