Latest: Signal Is Down Globally After Huge Influx of Users

Signal is facing an outage globally — thousands of users are reporting errors to site status tracker DownDetector, and Gadgets 360 confirmed this for ourselves as well. Although you can open the app and send messages, nothing is actually being delivered right now. The issues seem to have started about one hour ago at 8.30pm IST on Friday, and appears to be a global outage. 

If you open Signal right now, you will see a new banner which explains that the app is facing some technical difficulties, although there are no additional details in the banner as of now. However, it does say that the team is working to restore service as quickly as possible.

Although there has been no update on what the issue is, it is possible that the issue has to do with the huge number of users who have been signing on to Signal, as people are moving away from WhatsApp in droves after it announced a new privacy policy, and said that if users did not accept, then their accounts would have to be removed.

Thousands of users reported problems with Signal in under an hour

Both Signal and Telegram have seen a huge influx of users as a result, with Signal becoming the number one messaging app in many markets. A tweet by Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike from earlier in the week had noted that the entire small non-profit team at Signal was working late nights and weekends to keep Signal running.

Does WhatsApp’s new privacy policy spell the end for your privacy? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.