The National Privacy Commission has cleared food chain giant Jollibee Foods Corporation and messaging and calling application Rakuten Viber over their “Holiday Gems Christmas Campaign 2025,” which drew questions from thousands of users after a Jollibee logo appeared whenever the word “Christmas” was typed in Viber messages.

On Tuesday, the NPC, through its Compliance and Monitoring Division, said the campaign did not involve the processing of personal information of Viber users. “The NPC-CID also did not find evidence of unlawful access to user communications. The investigation, conducted by the NPC-CID through its Quick Response and Special Cases Unit, was initiated following multiple complaints regarding potential personal data processing and unauthorized access to private communications,” the NPC said.

The commission said its evaluation and independent testing showed the feature used contextual, on-device matching mechanisms, with predefined keywords stored locally within the application. “This process ensured that animated visual elements were deployed at the device level without transmitting message content to external servers for keyword detection. Furthermore, the investigation confirmed that campaign delivery parameters were based on country codes rather than geographic tagging or user location data,” it said.

The NPC added that there were insufficient indicators of personal information processing as defined under Section 3 of the Data Privacy Act of 2012. Despite this, it urged the public to remain vigilant and to report any suspicious data processing activities to authorities to ensure the continued protection of personal information and privacy rights.