Signal, the popular encrypted messaging app, stopped working in China on Tuesday, according to various reports. The app is still available on the Apple App Store in China, according to Reuters, but it is not clear how long this can last.
The Chinese government has made no announcement about the blocking or prohibition of Signal in China, but The Signal website was not available in the country starting on Monday. Google Play Store is not available in China, but Android users could download the app directly from the Signal website.
Signal did not immediately respond to questions e-mailed on Tuesday.
Text message verification codes for Signal are not working in China at the moment, according to users who are discussing the outage. Twitter, which would make it impossible for anyone using a phone number in mainland China to sign up for the service. Some users were still able to accesscease signal if they connected a VPN.
The signal is supposed to still working in Hong Kong, a region that was largely autonomous from the Chinese government before a crackdown in recent months largely destroyed the “one country, two systems” governance approach.
China totaled more than 500,000 downloads of Signal on iOS, according to TechCrunch, although it is a relatively humble number in a country of 1.4 billion people. But Signal’s growth was probably worrying for Chinese officials who are trying to monitor and control everything that is done on the Internet in mainland China. End-to-end signal encryption would make monitoring extremely difficult communications between two people in the app.
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The signal was developed by Open Whisper Systems, and has a lot of luggage, since it has ties with the US intelligence community. But that origin story alone does it’s a little surprising Sign was allowed within China in the first place. WeChat, which is not end-to-end encrypted, is by far the most popular messaging app in China.