‘Number of Signal users doubled from 20 to 40 million in a month’

The number of active Signal users has doubled in a month from 20 million to 40 million users. That’s what sources tell The Verge. The growth has to do with the announcement of new privacy terms from WhatsApp.

According to sources who spoke to The Verge, two million new Signal users were added in the first 12 hours after WhatsApp introduced the new terms. Meanwhile, the number of users is said to have doubled compared to a month ago: from 20 to 40 million. Signal itself does not disclose exact figures.

The influx of users recently caused Signal to suffer an outage after it also saw a large increase in Android downloads. Signal aims to get 100 million active users.

The popularity for the open source messaging service Signal is mainly because Signal, unlike WhatsApp, does not store any user data at all. In addition, Signal is largely run by volunteers and lives on donations. Not only Signal benefits from the criticism of WhatsApp: messaging service Telegram also recently reported a large influx. Telegram passed 500 million active users in the first week of January.

Signal employees are concerned about the app due to the strong growth, they tell The Verge. It has ensured that the goal of 100 million active users and enough donations to secure the future of Signal has been put above all else, and employee warnings about poorly developed features have been ignored. They are also concerned that Signal is not doing enough to identify and remove ‘bad actors’ who use Signal for the wrong purposes.