The president of Sign defended the messaging app’s safety on Wednesday after high Trump administration officers mistakenly included a journalist in an encrypted chatroom they used to debate a looming US assault on Yemen’s Houthis.
Sign’s Meredith Whittaker didn’t instantly deal with the blunder, which Democratic lawmakers have stated was a breach of US nationwide safety. However she described the app because the “gold standard in private comms” in a publish on X, which outlined Sign’s safety benefits over Meta’s WhatsApp messaging app.
“We’re open source, nonprofit, and we develop and apply (end-to-end encryption) and privacy-preserving tech across our system to protect metadata and message contents,” she stated.
Sign has been rising in reputation in Europe and the US as an alternative choice to WhatsApp as a result of it collects little or no knowledge about its customers.
In accordance with knowledge from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence agency, US downloads of Sign within the first three months of 2025 had been up 16% in comparison with the prior quarter, and 25% in comparison with the identical interval in 2024.
In a February interview with De Telegraaf, a Dutch newspaper, Whittaker stated Sign was a safer various as a result of WhatsApp collects metadata which can be utilized to see who messages whom, and the way typically.
“When compelled, like all companies that collect the data to begin with, they turn this important, revealing data over,” Whittaker stated in her publish on X.
In a press release, a WhatsApp spokesperson stated it depends on metadata to forestall spam and “keep the service safe from abuse.”
“We do not keep logs of who everyone is messaging or calling and do not track the personal messages people are sending one another for ads,” the assertion stated.
