After a lengthy outage, privacy-focused messaging app Signal is back online.
“Signal is back!” the company tweeted this weekend. “Thanks to the millions of new Signal users around the world for your patience. Your capacity for understanding inspired us while we expanded capacity.”
All eyes were on Signal after a new WhatsApp’s privacy policy (and a tweet from Elon Musk) prompted many WhatsApp users to jump ship and try Signal. The flood of sign-ups apparently overloaded Signal, taking it offline on Jan. 15. Developers then announced on Twitter that they were “adding new serves and extra capacity at a record pace.”
“Today exceeded even our most optimistic projections,” Signal said on Friday “Millions upon millions of new users are sending a message that privacy matters. We appreciate your patience.”
Signal also indicated that an “unfortunate side effect” is that some users “might see errors” in some of their chats. If you’re having trouble, follow the steps below. “The errors do not affect chat security & will be automatically fixed in the next app update,” Signal says.
