The recent incident involving the inclusion of a journalist in an encrypted chatroom by top Trump administration officials has sparked discussions around the security of messaging platforms. In response, Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, took to X to reaffirm the app’s commitment to privacy and security, positioning it as the “gold standard in private comms.”
Signal’s Commitment to Privacy
While Whittaker did not directly comment on the security breach alleged by Democratic lawmakers, she emphasized Signal’s advantages over competitors, particularly Meta’s WhatsApp. In her post, she highlighted Signal’s open-source nature and nonprofit status, which underpin its development of end-to-end encryption and privacy-preserving technologies designed to safeguard both metadata and message contents.
Signal has seen a notable increase in popularity in both Europe and the United States, particularly as users seek alternatives to WhatsApp that prioritize data privacy. According to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm, US downloads of Signal surged by 16% in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the previous quarter, and by 25% year-over-year.
In an interview with De Telegraaf, a Dutch newspaper, Whittaker elaborated on Signal’s security features, contrasting them with WhatsApp’s data collection practices. She pointed out that WhatsApp collects metadata, which can reveal who communicates with whom and the frequency of those interactions. “When compelled, like all companies that collect the data to begin with, they turn this important, revealing data over,” Whittaker stated in her post.
In defense of its practices, a spokesperson for WhatsApp stated that the platform relies on metadata to combat spam and maintain service integrity. They clarified, “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.”
