German supermarkets are notorious for their middle-aisle madness, from cut-price chainsaws to inflatable jacuzzis.
Now the owner of Lidl is pushing what it hopes will become Germany’s new messaging app of choice, after a poor choice by the president of the Bundestag parliament, Julia Klöckner.
She fell victim to a fairly unsophisticated case of so-called phishing. She was contacted by someone claiming to be support staff from Signal, a popular messenger alternative to WhatsApp, and provided the scammer with her account pin.
That opened the door to dozens of private chat groups and messages from other politicians, including chancellor Friedrich Merz.
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Where loose lips once sank ships, Klöckner’s quick thumbs appear to have sunk Signal – at least in German political circles.
With around 300 politicians reportedly affected by the scam, Berlin is rushing to recalibrate – and formalise – previously ad hoc back-channel communications.
Enter Schwarz Gruppe, ultimate owners of Lidl and, in recent years, a growing force in European IT services such as cloud computing.
Sensing opportunity in crisis, its Schwarz Digits subsidiary is lobbying Germany’s federal parliament – and its politicians – to switch over to Wire, its open-source messaging app.
The decade-old app – combining encrypted text messages, voice and video calls with data sharing – is already part of a pilot project run by Germany’s federal agency for IT security.
Wire already has an edge on its competitors as the only messaging app certified for official use with classified German government documents.
Last February, Schwarz Digits – owner of Wire – signed a contract to provide that government agency with server capacity to run openDesk, its open-source European office suite alternative to Microsoft 365.
If Berlin choose Wire, it will accelerate a pivot across Europe – including Denmark, Austria and France – away from US software and servers, with rising subscription bills and sanction risks.
Wire did not respond to a request for comment but was quick to react to the Signal phishing revelations in a press release: “Secure communications is not a feature, it is a foundation.”
