SignalGate, because it’s come to be known as, will be the greatest 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 by accident 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 charge of recent 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 development, in line with Sign’s management, that makes this week the only greatest 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 development and partnerships. “It’s mind-blowing, even on our aspect.”
Harada declined to provide absolute numbers for Sign’s consumer development past saying that its complete downloads are within the “lots of of hundreds of thousands,” which has been the case for a number of years. However he mentioned that the week’s charge 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 charge day by 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 hundreds of thousands of customers abandoning that communications app. However that incident principally introduced non-People to Sign, in contrast to the present, US-focused SignalGate bump.
Numbers from the market intelligence agency Sensor Tower largely align with Sign’s personal evaluation of that development: 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 mean week in 2024. Exterior of the US, Sensor Tower noticed solely a 21 p.c improve 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 by accident added Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to that group in a surprising breach of confidentiality—has raised critical questions concerning the safety practices of the Trump administration which can be nonetheless resonating days later.
The scandal has known as into query whether or not the chief department officers had been planning the airstrike utilizing weak non-approved and even private units slightly than the safe machines meant for labeled conversations. Screenshots of the group chat printed by The Atlantic on Wednesday point out the officers had been utilizing Sign’s disappearing messages function to delete their communications, doubtlessly in violation of US report retention legal guidelines.
