(Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images) If you’re struggling to text your contacts on Signal, you're not alone. The messaging app suffered an outage on Friday morning. “Signal is experiencing technical difficulties. We are working hard to restore service as quickly as possible,” the messaging app tweeted on Friday. According to outage tracking site Downdetector.com, the problems began at 6:48 a.m. PST for many users across the US and Europe, who encountered connection errors or delayed texts. The rare outage occurs as Signal has seen a massive influx in new users. According to Google Play, the number of installs on Android devices skyrocketed this week from 10 million to 50 million plus. On the iOS App Store, Signal’s popularity also shot up from a bottom-tier social networking app to number one on the list, according to market analytics firm App Annie. Originally released in 2014, the Signal app is seeing a sudden explosion in downloads after rival messaging service WhatsApp released an updated privacy policy that subtly points out user data can be shared with company parent Facebook. The data sharing is nothing new, but the news prompted Tesla CEO Elon Musk last week to tell his Twitter followers to use the Signal instead, sparking a wave of new app downloads. Media outlets are point out the tech industry’s crackdown on President’s Trump’s social media activity and the right-wing-friendly app Parler may be driving users to Signal as well.  Both WhatsApp and Signal use end-to-end encryption, meaning the companies (and law enforcement) can’t read your messages. But unlike Facebook, which makes billions from mining people’s data for targeted advertising, Signal is run by a nonprofit organization. (Disclosure: Downdetector owner Ookla is owned by PCMag parent company Ziff Davis.)

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