Signal’s popularity skyrockets after leak of classified information from a group chat of Trump officials
The popularity of the Signal messenger has increased dramatically after an unexpected scandal involving officials from the administration of Donald Trump, informs TechCrunch.
Signal’s global downloads are up 28% compared to their average over the past 30 days. In the US, this figure jumped by 45%. It is interesting that in Yemen, which was directly related to the incident, the number of downloads increased by 42%. In the Yemeni App Store, the application rose from 50th to 9th place in the social network category in just one day.
It will be recalled that on March 24, some media disclosed information that high-ranking US officials — including Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth — used a group chat in Signal to coordinate a planned military strike against the Houthi forces in Yemen. By mistake, The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to this chat, who accessed the discussion and later published its contents.
Despite the incident, the functioning of Signal did not cause complaints – the problem arose due to the human factor, and not a technical malfunction. At the same time, the situation caused a sharp increase in interest in the messenger, which is known for its end-to-end encryption and high level of privacy.
Signal has not yet commented on the situation. Meanwhile, the U.S. government launched an investigation into the leak, which revealed details about the timing of the attack, the types of weapons and types of aircraft that should not have entered the public domain.
