How Signal turned a national security crisis into a branding moment
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The controversy around “Signalgate”—top government officials accidentally including a journalist in their group chat discussing details of a military attack in Yemen—has become the new Trump administration’s biggest headache to date. But it’s also been an unprecedented name-recognition moment for the encrypted-communication app Signal, literally putting it in the top headlines around the world, and turning a national security screwup into a massive branding moment.
Is that a good thing for Signal? There are some potential risks and pitfalls—and usually having “gate” appended to your company name isn’t exactly a plus. But in this case, the attention appears to be paying off for Signal.
For starters, a slew of high-profile media explainers has no doubt introduced the whole idea of encrypted-text apps to plenty of people who never gave the category much thought, but who are now learning about “the favorite chat app for spies and journalists,” as the Wall Street Journal dubbed it. And many may conclude that if a sizable portion of the president’s cabinet figured the app was private enough to pick over military strike details, it’s probably private enough for complaining about the boss or gossiping about the neighbors. (After all, the Trump officials’ cover wasn’t blown by hackers or scammers, but by an embarrassing user error.)
“For everyday Americans, this seems like an inadvertent but strong endorsement of the cybersecurity and privacy value that Signal represents,” one secure-messaging advocate told The Intercept, noting that the government has previously criticized such apps as potential tools of terrorists and criminals. Signal promptly shot up app-store download charts; as of Thursday, it was No. 15 on the Apple App Store’s free apps ranking, up from 49th early in the week. And according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, downloads of the app from March 24 to March 26 were up 105% from the prior week, and 150% from the same period last year.
The recent news coverage has also highlighted the differences between Signal and the better-known WhatsApp, a private messenger tool now owned by Meta. (WhatsApp reportedly has more than 2 billion users globally, and Signal has an estimated 40 to 70 million monthly.) Signal is an independent, nonprofit entity, and the app is open source. Plenty of privacy experts prefer Signal because it collects less user data and is, you know, not owned by Meta.
Coincidentally, the respective heads of WhatsApp and Signal just recently had a public disagreement, with WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart saying that its security protocols are essentially the same, and Signal president Meredith Whittaker pushing back hard on that claim. “Signal is the gold standard in private comms,” she said in an X post—a statement that’s since been widely quoted in SignalGate stories. (Signal did not respond to an inquiry from Fast Company.)
That said, one of the risks is that Team Trump—not generally known for acknowledging blunders—has been casting about for a scapegoat. And that’s already entailed what seem like veiled attempts to blame Signal’s UX. In an interview with Fox News, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said he took responsibility for inadvertently inviting the journalist into the chat group, but asked: “Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name . . . and then you have somebody else’s number there?”
He also speculated that the journalist got in the group “deliberately” or through “some other technical means.” These head-scratchers seemed to blame some unspecified software glitch or vulnerability, but ended up sounding like a dodge.
Still, a second concern is that the extensive criticism of the administration officials involved might rub off on, or imply faults with, Signal itself. (That’s what Trump himself seemed to be doing when he baselessly mused that the app “could be defective.”) More broadly, those critiques note that such sensitive communication should happen in specially designed “secure compartmented information facilities,” or SCIFs, which among other things ban cellphones, as they’re vulnerable to hacks.
Separately, the group’s messages were set to expire, which runs against laws that require archiving of official communications. Big financial institutions operate under similar regulations. But this doesn’t necessarily suggest flaws in apps like Signal or WhatsApp; it means additional protocol often rules out “off-channel” options by default, and that protocol doesn’t appear to have been followed.
In an X post, Signal addressed what it called “misinformation” in a government memo interpreted as suggesting “vulnerabilities” in its app, but actually referring to advanced phishing scams. The post did not address Signalgate or the finger-pointing fallout but seemed clear enough that Signal is eager to defend its reputation and clarify that whatever went wrong here, it wasn’t a tech failure. “Right now there are a lot of new eyes on Signal,” the company wrote. That, at least, is certainly no secret.