DuckDuckGo Search Engine, Screen Capture/DuckDuckGo
With the recent big tech migration with users moving to Signal, Telegram, and privacy search engine DuckDuckGo, privacy tech is surging with a recent spike in popularity among users.
Signal recently experienced an outage due to the migration with 1.3 million new user sign-ups on January 11. MeWe, an alternative to Facebook, is also seeing users flock to their social media platform.
The influx users has caused Signal to make changes in its company structure,
“Messaging app Signal has seen ‘unprecedented’ growth following a controversial change in rival WhatsApp’s privacy terms and is looking to hire more staff as it seeks to bolster the service and supporting infrastructure.”
Part of the controversy revolves around WhatsApp’s sharing user data with Facebook and Instagram starting February 8:
“Along with another encrypted app, Telegram, Signal has been the main beneficiary of online outrage around the changes announced last week, which require WhatsApp users to share their data with both Facebook FB.O and Instagram.”
Although recently WhatsApp has revised its privacy policy concerning data sharing:
“WhatsApp has announced that it will delay enforcing its new privacy terms from February 8 to May 15.”
DuckDuckGo also has made major inroads with its private web searches recently becoming more popular than ever:
*DuckDuckGo celebrates a milestone as it reaches 100 million searches in a single day:
*DuckDuckGo’s public traffic data indicates the record was hit this past Monday, January 11.
*DuckDuckGo Hits New Record: 100 Million Searches Per Day
*Including Monday’s milestone number, DuckDuckGo is on track to hit around 90 million daily average searches for the month of January.
MeWe, a Los Angeles-based social media network which presumedly stresses privacy tech and features no ads, no targeting, and no newsfeed manipulation, currently is the #1 downloaded social app in the Google Play Store, and the #3 downloaded app, overall in the app store:
“The privacy-first ‘anti-Facebook’ platform added 2.5 million new members in the last week.”
