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SignalGate Is Driving the Most US Downloads of Signal Ever
Scandal surrounding the Trump administration's Signal group chat has led to a landmark week for the encrypted messaging app’s adoption—its “largest US growth moment by a massive margin.”
In Signal's history, the only comparable spike in adoption occurred when WhatsApp changed its privacy policy in 2021, Harada says, leading to millions of users abandoning that communications app. The Atlantic's revelation on Monday that secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, national security adviser Michael Waltz, vice president JD Vance, and other Trump administration officials used a Signal group chat to plan an airstrike against Houthi rebels in Yemen—and that Waltz accidentally added Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to that group in a shocking breach of confidentiality—has raised serious questions about the security practices of the Trump administration that are still resonating days later. Screenshots of the group chat published by The Atlantic on Wednesday indicate the officials were using Signal's disappearing messages feature to delete their communications, potentially in violation of US record retention laws.
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