Signal the privacy and security-focused messaging is back online on Sunday after a lengthy outage that started on Friday, due to server capacity issues resulting from the influx of millions user in recent times, following a controversial privacy policy update to WhatsApp and a tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk asking his followers to use Signal.
“Signal is back!” the company tweeted on Sunday, “like an underdog going through a training montage, we’ve learned a lot since yesterday — and we did it together. Thanks to the millions of new Signal users around the world for your patience. Your capacity for understanding inspired us while we expanded capacity.”
Read: ‘Signal’ an alternative to WhatsApp – Features and all you need to know
Following the outage, “an unfortunate side effect” occurred as some users might “might see errors” in some of their chats. Signal noted that the errors “does *not* affect your chat’s security, but you may have missed a message from that contact. The next Signal app updates will fix this automatically.”
What you can do now to fix the error
On Android, if you see “Bad encrypted message,” tap the menu in the top-right & tap “Reset secure session,” according to Signal.
On iOS, tap the “Reset Session” button below “Received message was out of sync.” The errors do not affect chat security & will be automatically fixed in the next app update.
On Android if you see "Bad encrypted message," tap the menu in the top-right & tap "Reset secure session." On iOS tap the "Reset Session" button below "Received message was out of sync." The errors do not affect chat security & will be automatically fixed in the next app update. pic.twitter.com/dgLGLZS3zB
— Signal (@signalapp) January 17, 2021
Ifunanya Ikueze is an Engineer, Safety Professional, Writer, Investor, Entrepreneur and Educator.
