Trump's victory pushes people to download encrypted chat app

In his campaign, Donald Trump stated that he'd like to increase government surveillance, in order to improve national security and protect the US from terrorism. This, however, didn't seem like a good idea for a lot of people. In recent years, there have been plenty of scandals around government surveillance of civilians and the population is generally on edge when it comes to someone tapping in their phone.

This is why a lot of users have taken preemptive measures. The LA Times reports that encrypted chat and calls app, Signal, has seen a massive spike in downloads after the election results became official. The app offers end-to-end encryption and doesn't store its users' conversations anywhere on the Internet.

“Many users have reported that their entire social circle switched to Signal in the past week,” said Moxie Marlinspike, founder of the company behind Signal. He didn't want to give exact numbers, but said that downloads have increased by 400% after the election.

Despite the fact that Trump's intentions are good, it appears that the general public questions his means. We still don't know if the Signal trend will catch on, but according to Marlinspike, a lot of the new downloads actually resulted in new everyday users.

via LA Times