Signal Downloads and Userbase Sees a Massive Surge After WhatsApp’s Private Policy Change

Signal first made headlines one week ago when Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter that the app’s encryption level is much better than all of its competitors. The popularity of Signal has been boosted even more now that WhatsApp announced it will change its service’s privacy policy. The chatting app saw a massive 7.5 million installs growth on the App Store and Google Play.

Millions of People Download Signal

According to a new report from Sensor Tower, the latest growth in popularity for Signal is 43 times higher than the one from the previous week when Elon Musk tweeted about it. The interesting thing about this is that it seems to not be a trend. The reason why we are saying that is because more and more people are downloading Signal on their smartphones and ditching WhatsApp.

Next-Gen Encryption

As previously noted, Signal’s saw a massive rise in popularity when Elon Musk tweeted about its next-gen encryption technology. While WhatsApp also features end-to-end-encryption, it recently announced that it will be making changes to its privacy policy.

Therefore, people are afraid that their data will be shared with Facebook. The folks who are in charge of WhatsApp are doing their best to let everyone know that this will not happen and that their data is safe. “We want to address some rumors and be 100% clear we continue to protect your private messages with end-to-end encryption,” said WhatsApp’s developers on Twitter.

Signal Adds More Servers

Since no one was expecting tens of millions of people to install Signal at the same time, the developers of the app had no other option than to purchase additional servers to help them provide the best services possible. “We continue to shatter traffic records and add capacity as more and more people come to terms with how much they dislike Facebook’s new terms,” Signal said in a tweet. “If you weren’t able to create a new group recently, please try again. New servers are ready to serve you.”