Signal, the popular encrypted messaging app, stopped working in China on Tuesday, according to several reportsThe app is still available in the Apple App Store in China, he says Reuters, but it is not clear how long that will take.
The Chinese government has made no announcement that Signal will be blocked or banned in China, however Signal’s website was down in the country that begins on Monday. Google’s Play S.tore is not available in China, but Android users were previously able to download the app directly from Signal’s website.
Signal did not immediately respond to questions emailed early Tuesday.
SMS verification codes for Signal are currently not working in China, according to users discussing the outage Twittermaking new signups to the service impossible for anyone using a phone number in mainland China. Some users could still use acstop Signal when they a VPN enabled.
Signal is reported to be still working in Hong Kong, a region that was largely autonomous from the Chinese government before the crackdown in recent months largely devastated the “one country, two systems” approach to governance.
According to China, China has achieved a total of more than 500,000 Signal downloads on iOS TechCrunchalthough that’s a relatively modest number in a country of 1.4 billion people. But Signal’s growth probably worried Chinese authorities who are trying to monitor and control everything that is done on the Internet in mainland China. Signal’s end-to-end encryption would have made it extremely difficult to control communication between two people on the app.
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Signal was developed by Open Whisper Systems, and has had a lot of baggage ever since ties with the American intelligence communityBut that origin story only makes it somewhat surprising Signal was allowed in China in the first place. WeChat, which is not end-to-end encrypted, is by far the most popular messaging app in China.