The president of Signal defended the messaging app’s security on Wednesday after a journalist was mistakenly admitted to an encrypted chat room used by top Trump administration officials to discuss a possible US military action against the Houthis in Yemen.

Signal’s Meredith Whitaker did not directly address the breach as a violation of US national security, as Democratic lawmakers have said. But she described the app as “the gold standard for private communications” in a post on X, Opens a New Tab, which outlined Signal’s security advantages over Meta’s WhatsApp messaging app.

“We are open source, non-profit, and we develop and deploy technology that protects privacy throughout our system (end-to-end encryption) and metadata and message content,” she said.

Signal is gaining popularity in Europe and the United States as an alternative to WhatsApp because it collects very little data about its users.

According to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Signal downloads in the United States increased by 16% in the first three months of 2025 compared to the previous quarter and by 25% compared to the same period in 2024.

Opening a new tab with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf in February, Whittaker said Signal is a safer alternative because WhatsApp collects metadata that can be used to see who messages are sent to and how often.

“Like all companies that collect data at the start, when forced, they turn over this important, revealing data,” Whittaker said in her post on X.

In a statement, a WhatsApp spokesperson said it relies on metadata to prevent spam and “keep the service safe from abuse.”

“We don’t keep logs of who everyone messages or calls, and we don’t monitor the private messages people send to each other for advertising.”