The massive influx of new users has caused technical difficulties for the operators of the messenger Signal. This is the result of a series of tweets, which quite a few (new) users of the messenger themselves will understand. A few hours ago it finally hit Twitter: "Signal is back!"
First, Signal confirmed on Friday "technical difficulties", the service should be restored as soon as possible. Yesterday, Saturday, it was announced that Signal would also bring more capacity online as soon as possible to handle the traffic.
Error messages
Now the service has been restored, but users may see an error message as a side effect of the server outage: "message not properly encrypted". Signal ares that chats are still secure, but users may not have received a message from a contact. A future update of the app should fix the problem.
For those who get the error message on Android, tap the menu at the top right of the app and then tap "Reset secure session". On iOS tap on the button "Reset session" On "Received message was out of sync".
Currently, many smartphone users are switching from WhatsApp to Signal as the service forces consent to its new privacy policy, which states that data will be shared with other Facebook services. The option to share applies with the restriction that it may not be used for advertising, but it may be used for analysis purposes. Originally, WhatsApp gave its users an ultimatum to leave their data until 8. The Facebook subsidiary had agreed to the new usage regulations in February, but now it has postponed the deadline.