The president of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, defended the messaging platform’s security features on Wednesday following a significant mishap involving senior officials from the Trump administration. The officials unintentionally included a journalist in an encrypted chatroom where they discussed potential U.S. military actions against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
While Whittaker did not explicitly comment on the incident, Democratic lawmakers have characterized it as a potential breach of national security. In a post on X, she emphasized Signal’s reputation as the “gold standard in private communications,” highlighting the app’s security features in comparison to Meta’s WhatsApp.
Whittaker stated, “We’re open source, nonprofit, and we develop and apply end-to-end encryption and privacy-preserving technology across our system to protect metadata and message contents.”
Signal’s user base has been expanding in Europe and the United States as individuals seek alternatives to WhatsApp due to Signal’s minimal data collection practices.
Data from market intelligence company Sensor Tower shows that U.S. downloads of Signal surged by 16 percent in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the previous quarter, and jumped 25 percent compared to the same period in 2024.
In a February interview with the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, Whittaker pointed out that Signal offers greater security than WhatsApp, which collects metadata that could reveal communication patterns.
“When compelled, like all companies that collect the data to begin with, they turn this important, revealing data over,” she remarked in her post on X.
A spokesperson for WhatsApp responded by explaining that the app uses metadata to prevent spam and ensure the service remains 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 spokesperson stated.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
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