Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

Earlier this month, WeTransfer, one of the most widely used file-sharing platforms in the creative industry, quietly rolled out an update to its terms of service. Hidden in the legal fine print was a clause that granted WeTransfer extensive rights to user-uploaded content: not only the right to host or display files, but to reproduce, modify, commercialize, and even use them to train machine learning models.

For organizations operating in or with the European Union, understanding how data privacy laws intersect across borders is foundational. And yet, the U.S. CLOUD Act continues to create confusion about what digital sovereignty actually means in practice. This blog explains the key implications of the CLOUD Act, why it conflicts with European data protection principles like the GDPR, and what it means for businesses trying to protect their sensitive communications.

European organizations want to adopt sovereign digital tools. Tools built in the EU, aligned with data protection regulations, and designed for transparency. But the reality is more complex. Our recent EU Sovereignty survey of 273 decision-makers across IT, compliance, and public sector roles shows a clear paradox: This article explores why intent isn't translating into action and what’s needed to close the sovereignty gap.

A conversation with Tuta on digital sovereignty, encryption backdoors, and the risks of EU chat control.

Last year, the world experienced 3205 cyberattacks and data breaches, and the biggest attack exposed more than 3 billion user accounts. As organizations step up their cybersecurity efforts, they must also ensure compliance with emerging regulations. Newly implemented laws like the NIS2 (Network and Information Systems Directive) are now focusing not just on external or customer facing protocols and incident management, but also secure internal communication processes and records.

The rise of secure communications is a crucial aspect of adapting to a threat-filled digital landscape, enabling individuals and organizations to communicate safely, privately, and with sovereignty. It is in this spirit that Wire has raised concerns about what we consider to be risky, insecure, outdated, or non-credible approaches. Recently, we raised such concerns about Matrix, which seem to have struck a nerve and led to a lengthy and heated response.

In today's world, secure communication is essential rather than optional. That’s especially true for public institutions and critical infrastructure providers navigating increasing cyber threats and growing regulatory pressure. That’s why we’ve partnered with EBCONT, one of Austria’s leading IT service providers, to deliver end-to-end secure communication that’s compliant, sovereign and built for Europe.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is putting the best foot forward possible in an impossible situation. Microsoft is investing significant effort and resources into “private” and “sovereign” service offerings and curation to reassure EU customers that their data will be secure. In a recent LinkedIn post, Satya announced new sovereign offerings that he says reflect Microsoft’s commitment to giving customers choice, control, and security.

Tired of relying on Big Tech for your collaboration, communication and productivity needs? You’re not alone. Whether you’re concerned about data privacy, compliance, vendor lock-in, or digital sovereignty, the shift to European-built software is gaining serious momentum. And for good reason: these platforms respect your data, operate under GDPR by default, and are often open source or self-hosted.

Every time a user visited a website with a Meta Pixel, the app silently collected browsing metadata, cookies, search activity, products viewed or purchased, and tied it to the user’s identity via app login IDs or Android Advertising IDs. This invasive behavior bypassed browser privacy settings, undermining user consent.