Deezer

Is Deezer safe?

For listening, yes. Deezer streams licensed music, podcasts and radio, and has no open messaging, so there is little for a scammer or stranger to use against you inside the app. We score it 57/100, level with Spotify and well below Apple Music (78).

The weak points are data and accounts. A contractor that Deezer stopped using in 2020 kept a copy of its user records, which leaked in 2022. Free accounts are profiled for third-party ads. And there is no two-step login.

What happened in the 2022 leak

In November 2022 Deezer learned that a data set from its former advertising contractor had appeared online. Deezer says it used the provider until 2020, that the provider confirmed in 2020 that the data had been destroyed, and that it had not. The copy dates from 2019 and was sold, then shared widely on a hacking forum.

Have I Been Pwned lists 229 million unique email addresses from the leak, with names, usernames, dates of birth, gender, IP addresses and the city or country of each user. Deezer says no passwords or payment details were included and that its own systems were not affected.

France's data protection authority, the CNIL, investigated after Deezer reported the leak. On 11 December 2025 it fined the contractor, Mobius Solutions Ltd, €1 million. The CNIL found that Mobius kept the data of more than 46 million Deezer users after the contract ended, and used it to improve its own platform for personalised advertising without any instruction from Deezer. Mobius said three employees had copied the data without its knowledge; the CNIL held the company responsible anyway. Deezer itself was not fined.

That matters for the score in two ways. The leak still counts against security, because Deezer's users were exposed and the data is the kind scammers use for convincing phishing. The fine does not count against Deezer's regulatory record, because the CNIL faulted the contractor, not Deezer.

What Deezer collects for ads

Apple's label lists email address and device ID as data used to track you across other companies' apps and websites. Coarse location, user and device IDs, product interaction and advertising data are linked to you for third-party advertising. On Android, Google Play says device IDs and email addresses are shared with other companies for analytics and marketing.

Deezer's privacy policy is more specific. If you use the free tier, Deezer builds an advertising profile from your age, gender, IDs, coarse location and listening activity, and uses it to show third-party ads in its apps. You can refuse this in the cookie settings, and then see less targeted ads. Paying subscribers are not shown third-party ads, but Deezer uses their profiles to find similar people for its own ad campaigns. The policy also says Deezer shares some data with partners such as telecom operators, retailers and labels that sell Deezer bundles.

Most data is kept for 3 years after your last activity, support requests for 5 years and payment records for 10 years under French law. The policy we read was last revised in December 2021.

How to protect your Deezer account

Deezer offers no authenticator app, text code or passkeyPasskeyA way to sign in without a password. Your device holds a key tied to one website or app and unlocks it with your fingerprint, face or PIN.More in the glossary at login, so the password is your only lock. It does send a six-digit code to your email before anyone can change the email address or password, which slows down a takeover. Deezer runs a vulnerability disclosure page for security researchers.

1. Check your email on Have I Been Pwned. If it appears in the Deezer leak, expect phishing that uses your real name and birth date.
2. Use a unique password for Deezer, and turn on two-step login for the email account linked to it.
3. On the free tier, open the cookie settings and refuse ad personalisation if you do not want an ad profile.
4. Request your data in account settings to see what Deezer holds; the download link arrives after about 7 days.
5. Delete the account in settings if you stop using it, so another leaked copy holds less of you.

Is Deezer safe for children?

The catalogue is licensed music and podcasts, and there is no way for strangers to message a child. The catch is the default: all explicit tracks and cover art play unless you change it. The filter in the app's settings can hide explicit content from search, Flow and recommendations, and Deezer Family plans include kid profiles. The App Store rates the app 13+.

How we scored it

Scams and harmful content (80) and the regulatory record (86) are Deezer's strongest factors: licensed content, no chat, and no fine naming Deezer as at fault. Privacy (45) reflects ad profiling and tracking on the free tier. Security (45) is weighed down by the 229 million records from the contractor leak and the lack of two-step login. For an ad-free option with stronger login, see Tidal.