SignalGate, because it’s come to be referred to as, could be the largest scandal to hit the Trump administration in its first months in energy. However it’s been nice for Sign.
Because the information broke on Monday that senior Trump administration cupboard members unintentionally included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic in a bunch chat on the Sign encrypted messaging platform the place the officers had been making secret plans to bomb Yemen, the following information cycle and the fixed mentions of Sign have led to the encrypted messaging platform doubling its traditional price of latest downloads, the non-profit group that runs Sign tells WIRED. On condition that 2025 to this point has already been a “banner yr” for Sign’s progress, in response to Sign’s management, that makes this week the only largest bump in US adoption of the app in Sign’s almost 11 years of existence.
“In Sign’s historical past, that is the biggest US-growth second by a large margin,” says Jun Harada, Sign’s head of progress and partnerships. “It’s mind-blowing, even on our facet.”
Harada declined to provide absolute numbers for Sign’s person progress past saying that its whole downloads are within the “lots of of thousands and thousands,” which has been the case for a number of years. However he stated that the week’s price of adoption has been twice that of a typical week for 2025, which in flip was twice that of a typical week the identical time final yr. “It occurred instantly” after the Atlantic broke the story of Sign’s use within the Yemeni bombing, Harada says. “And it’s been sustained. We’ve been sustaining that price day-after-day.”
In Sign’s historical past, the one comparable spike in adoption occurred when WhatsApp modified its privateness coverage in 2021, Harada says, resulting in thousands and thousands of customers abandoning that communications app. However that incident largely introduced non-People to Sign, not like the present, US-focused SignalGate bump.
Numbers from the market intelligence agency Sensor Tower largely align with Sign’s personal evaluation of that progress: The corporate says that Sign downloads within the US elevated 105 p.c in comparison with the prior week—and 150 p.c in comparison with a median week in 2024. Exterior of the US, Sensor Tower noticed solely a 21 p.c enhance in Sign downloads in comparison with the prior week.
The Atlantic’s revelation on Monday that secretary of protection Pete Hegseth, director of nationwide intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, nationwide safety adviser Michael Waltz, vp JD Vance, and different Trump administration officers used a Sign group chat to plan an airstrike in opposition to Houthi rebels in Yemen—and that Waltz unintentionally added Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to that group in a stunning breach of confidentiality—has raised severe questions concerning the safety practices of the Trump administration which might be nonetheless resonating days later.
The scandal has referred to as into query whether or not the chief department officers had been planning the airstrike utilizing susceptible non-approved and even private units relatively than the safe machines meant for labeled conversations. Screenshots of the group chat revealed by The Atlantic on Wednesday point out the officers had been utilizing Sign’s disappearing messages characteristic to delete their communications, doubtlessly in violation of US report retention legal guidelines.
