Signal, Telegram users experience outages worldwide
Signal and Telegram are experiencing outages worldwide.
Security
Users of the popular encrypted communications services are reporting issues including connecting and accessing conversations in regions including Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as the US, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia.
Reports have flooded across social media, and as there is no downtime or status page for Signal, users appear to have become increasingly concerned over the past few hours due to silence and a lack of updates.
The sudden downtime of an app such as Signal, which protects communications data through end-to-end encryption -- but is a thorn in the side of governments and law enforcement without a means to crack it -- prompted panic in some users.
To make matters worse, there is no online update by either Open Whisper Systems or on the Signal Twitter page.
However, a Signal spokesperson said, "we're looking into this and working to get it resolved for you as soon as possible."
At the time of writing, some users are now saying that service has been restored. Others, however, are still experiencing downtime.
As reports flooded in, Telegram users reported similar connection issues. In this case, Telegram quickly posted an update on Twitter acknowledging the issue.
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Users in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa experienced downtime. It appears that Europe is now back online, but connectivity has not been fully restored at the time of writing in other regions.