The encrypted messaging app Singal is seeing an influx of new users signing up for its service after an update to Facebook’s WhatsApp privacy policy and an endorsement by Elon Musk on Twitter.
Like Ars Technica reports, Signal saw so many new users sign up that there were delays in verifying the phone number of new accounts.
RELATED: WHATSAPP MAKES DATA SHARING WITH MANDATORY FACEBOOK
Confusion over updating WhatsApp privacy policy
It all started when WhatsApp outlined a new privacy policy that will take effect next month. Compared to previous policies, the new one contains no indication that it will allow users to choose to share data with parent company Facebook.
Instead, the policy directly states that WhatsApp will share data (including your phone number, profile name and address book information) with Facebook.
“As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives and shares information from that family of companies,” the new privacy policy says.
“We can use the information we receive from them, and they can 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 gone so far as to reach out to rival social media platform Twitter to say that, in fact, nothing has changed.
2/5 It has been incorrectly reported that the latest update to WhatsApp’s 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 fake.
– Niamh Sweeney (@NiamhSweeneyNYC) January 7, 2021
Still, several posters responded to Niamh Sweeney’s topic above, stating that they had deleted their WhatsApp accounts.
Elon endorsement by Signal
At about the same time, Elon Musk, who has been criticizing Facebook recently, tweeted “Use Signal” to his 41.6 million followers.
Use Sign
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021
Musk, who was recently announced as the richest man in the world, also posted a meme satirizing the role of Facebook in this week’s attack on Congress.
All of this seems to have had a cumulative effect, resulting in millions of users leaving WhatsApp for Signal, a non-profit service focused on privacy co-funded and funded by Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp who left the company when he was disappointed with Facebook’s privacy practices.
Verification codes are currently overdue at a number of providers because many new people are trying to sign in now (we can barely register our enthusiasm). We are working with operators to resolve this as soon as possible. Hold on.
– Sign (@signalapp) January 7, 2021
Like The Verge points out, WhatsApp issued a long statement saying that updating the policy does not really change the way data is shared between the messaging app and Facebook.
It now appears that years of dubious practices, summed up by the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, may be peaking, with many users leaving WhatsApp forever.