Understanding Viber's risks for young people, including contact from strangers, group communities, and disappearing messages.
Official age
16+
We recommend
16+
Developer
Rakuten Group
Risks
3
Viber is a messaging app offering encrypted one-to-one and group chats, voice and video calls, disappearing messages, and large public 'Communities' and channels. It is widely used to keep in touch with family abroad, which is often why it ends up on a child's device. Its risk profile is similar to WhatsApp and Telegram: private encrypted messaging plus large public groups where strangers can make contact.
Children most often have Viber to talk to relatives in other countries, but teenagers also use it for group chats, voice notes, stickers, and joining public Communities and channels built around games, music, or interests. The features that matter for safety are disappearing messages (which can hide conversations from parents), public Communities that can hold huge numbers of strangers, and the ability for people to find and message a user. As with other messengers, a common grooming pattern is meeting a young person in a large public group and then moving them into a private one-to-one chat.
Who can add me to groups
Location: Settings > Privacy > Allow to add to groups
Set to: My contacts
Stops strangers adding a child to unknown or inappropriate group chats.
Personal data and profile
Location: Settings > Privacy
Set to: Restrict, disable 'Use peer-to-peer'
Limits what others can see and prevents your IP address being shared during calls.
Disappearing messages awareness
Location: Chat settings > Disappearing messages
Set to: Discuss and monitor
Understand that this feature can hide conversations; agree expectations rather than assuming it is off.
Set 'who can add me to groups' to contacts only
Time: 3 minutes
Talk about public Communities and the move-to-private-chat grooming pattern
Time: 10 minutes
Agree how disappearing messages will be handled in your family
Time: 5 minutes
Last reviewed: 2026-07-03