{"id":422203,"date":"2026-04-28T20:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/422203\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T20:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:34:08","slug":"lidl-owners-try-to-lure-german-politicians-with-middle-aisle-offer-of-a-secure-messaging-app-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/422203\/","title":{"rendered":"Lidl owners try to lure German politicians with \u2018middle-aisle offer\u2019 of a secure messaging app \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

German<\/a> supermarkets are notorious for their middle-aisle madness, from cut-price chainsaws to inflatable jacuzzis.<\/p>\n

Now the owner of Lidl<\/a> is pushing what it hopes will become Germany\u2019s new messaging app of choice, after a poor choice by the president of the Bundestag parliament, Julia Kl\u00f6ckner.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, and provided the scammer with her account pin. <\/p>\n

That opened the door to dozens of private chat groups and messages from other politicians, including chancellor Friedrich Merz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Where loose lips once sank ships, Kl\u00f6ckner\u2019s quick thumbs appear to have sunk Signal \u2013 at least in German political circles.<\/p>\n

With around 300 politicians reportedly affected by the scam, Berlin is rushing to recalibrate \u2013 and formalise \u2013 previously ad hoc back-channel communications.<\/p>\n

Enter Schwarz Gruppe, ultimate owners of Lidl and, in recent years, a growing force in European IT services such as cloud computing.<\/p>\n

Sensing opportunity in crisis, its Schwarz Digits subsidiary is lobbying Germany\u2019s federal parliament \u2013 and its politicians \u2013 to switch over to Wire, its open-source messaging app.<\/p>\n

The decade-old app \u2013 combining encrypted text messages, voice and video calls with data sharing \u2013 is already part of a pilot project run by Germany\u2019s federal agency for IT security.<\/p>\n

Wire already has an edge on its competitors as the only messaging app certified for official use with classified German government documents.<\/p>\n

Last February, Schwarz Digits \u2013 owner of Wire \u2013 signed a contract to provide that government agency with server capacity to run openDesk, its open-source European office suite alternative to Microsoft 365.<\/p>\n

If Berlin choose Wire, it will accelerate a pivot across Europe<\/a> \u2013 including Denmark<\/a>, Austria<\/a> and France<\/a> \u2013 away from US<\/a> software and servers, with rising subscription bills and sanction risks.<\/p>\n

Wire did not respond to a request for comment but was quick to react to the Signal phishing revelations in a press release: \u201cSecure communications is not a feature, it is a foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German supermarkets are notorious for their middle-aisle madness, from cut-price chainsaws to inflatable jacuzzis. Now the owner of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[99452,72,292,61,60,16117],"class_list":["post-422203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bundestag","tag-business","tag-germany","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lidl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}