Overloaded Signal faces tech glitch as downloads surge

Bengaluru: Signal faced technical difficulties over the weekend as it dealt with a flood of new users who were upset with bigger rival WhatsApp’s new privacy policy. The service was restored early on Sunday India time.

Signal has seen a surge in downloads in the last two weeks after WhatsApp unveiled a new privacy policy that allowed the messaging app to share more user data with parent Facebook and its group companies.

“Like an underdog going through a training montage, we’ve learned a lot since yesterday — and we did it together,” Signal said in a tweet.


It added that Signal users might see errors in some chats as a side effect to the outage, but will be resolved in the next update of the app. It clarified that the error does not affect the user's chat security.

Aruna Harder, COO, Signal Messenger, said the company has been adding new servers and extra capacity at a record pace every single day this week but had exceeded even their most optimistic projections.

Last week, Signal beat not only WhatsApp but also Facebook and Instagram in weekly India downloads.