Some WhatsApp users, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, have expressed their intention to make greater use of its competitor Signal, as the free application is at the top of downloads in India, Germany, France and Hong Kong.
To better win over its new users, Signal has even published a tutorial to help easily import group conversations from another messaging application.
As a result, the influx of new connections has caused some technical problems in recent days. “Verification codes are currently delayed (...) because many new people are trying to join Signal at the moment,” the company explained.
Launched in 2014, Signal is considered by specialists to be one of the most secure messaging applications on the market thanks in particular to its ability to encrypt “end-to-end” messages or audio and video calls.
It was already popular amongst whistle-blowers and journalists, thanks in particular to the public support of Edward Snowden, who was behind the revelations of the American secret service’s methods for monitoring telecommunications.
In February, the European Commission even recommended it to its teams, in particular to secure exchanges with people outside the organisation.
WhatsApp has been under fire since Thursday after asking its two billion or so users to accept new terms of use, allowing it to share more data with its parent company Facebook.
Users who refuse will no longer be able to access their accounts as of 8 February.
The group is seeking to monetise its platform by allowing advertisers to contact their customers via WhatsApp, or even to sell their products directly there, as is already the case in India.
According to the company, the data that can be shared between WhatsApp and Facebook’s application ecosystem (including Instagram and Messenger) includes contact and profile information, except for message content, which remains encrypted.
But the new conditions differ between the European Union and the rest of the world.
In the case of the EU and the UK, they will only be used to develop the functionalities offered to WhatsApp Business accounts, the company explained to AFP.
The “GAFAM” (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) has for months been in the sights of the European and American authorities, who are criticising these new millennium conglomerates for practices deemed anti-competitive.
