The Singal encrypted messaging app sees an influx of new registered users into its service following an update to Facebook’s proprietary WhatsApp privacy policy and an endorsement by Elon Musk on Twitter.
How Ars Technica reports, Signal has seen so many new users register that there have been delays in verifying the phone number of new accounts.
RELATED: WHATSAPP MAKES DATA SHARING WITH MANDATORY FACEBOOK
Confusion about updating WhatsApp privacy policy
It all started when WhatsApp outlined a new privacy policy that will go into effect next month. Compared to previous policies, the new one does not contain any indication that would allow users to disable data sharing with the parent company Facebook.
Instead, the policy directly states that WhatsApp will share data with Facebook (including your phone number, profile name, and address book information).
“As part of Facebook’s family of companies, WhatsApp receives information and shares information with this family of companies,” explains the new privacy policy he says.
“We may use the information we receive from them, and may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, personalize, support and market our services and their offerings,” he continues.
Now, Facebook employees have reached out to their rival social networking platform Twitter to say that, indeed, nothing has changed.
2/5 It has been incorrectly reported that the latest update to WhatsApp Terms of Service and Privacy Policy requires users in the European Region to agree to share data with Facebook for advertising purposes in order to continue using the Service. This is false.
– Niamh Sweeney (@NiamhSweeneyNYC) January 7, 2021
However, several posters responded to Niamh Sweeney’s thread claiming that they had deleted their WhatsApp accounts.
Signal Elon endorsement
At the same time, Elon Musk, who has been critical of Facebook in recent times, has tweeted “Use Signal” to his 41.6 million followers.
Use Signal
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021
Musk, who was recently announced to be the richest man in the world, too published a meme that satirized Facebook’s role in this week’s attack on Congress.
All of this seems to have had a cumulative effect, causing millions of users to abandon WhatsApp for Signal, a non-profit privacy service co-founded and funded by Brian Acton., the co-founder of WhatsApp who left the company when he became disillusioned with Facebook’s privacy practices.
Verification codes are currently being delayed by several vendors because there are now so many new people trying to join Signal (we can barely register our excitement). We are working with mobile operators to fix this as quickly as possible. Hang in there.
– Signals (@signalapp) January 7, 2021
How The Verge notes, WhatsApp has released a lengthy statement stating that the policy update does not change the way data is shared between the messaging app and Facebook.
It now appears that years of shady practices, characterized by the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, may be coming to mind and many users are definitely abandoning WhatsApp.