In an unusual move, encrypted chat service Signal has made its costs public. About $50 million will be needed annually by 2025, it said in a blog post on Thursday.
Currently, with approximately 50 full-time employees, salaries and other personnel costs cost $19 million. The bandwidth required for data transmission alone costs $2.8 million annually.
Signal consistently uses so-called end-to-end encryption, where the content of communications is visible only to those involved in plain text. Therefore, the (encrypted) messages are only temporarily stored in data centers before transmission. That also costs $1.3 million annually.
Those responsible explain:
Why is Signal releasing the figures?
Signal is not for profit and is managed by a non-profit foundation. The encryption technology is available free of charge as FOSS software and is also used by the chat service WhatsApp, among others.
The service wants to finance itself in the long term with the help of a broad base of donors, writes foundation chairman Meredith Whittaker, an American researcher and consultant who professionally focuses on the social impact and ethical questions of artificial intelligence (AI) and data protection. issues .
So far, Signal has been helped by a multi-million dollar donation from WhatsApp co-founder and multi-billionaire Brian Acton. In February 2018, he invested $50 million in the Signal Foundation, which he and Moxie Marlinspike had recently founded. He had previously received part of the more than $20 billion that Facebook paid for WhatsApp.
The world’s most popular messaging service WhatsApp can also be downloaded for free on an Android smartphone or iPhone, is (for the time being) ad-free and also offers end-to-end encryption. However, the Meta Group, which also includes Instagram and Facebook, collects as much personal information about users as possible. The US group’s business model provides for generating revenue from such data.
Sources
- signal.org: Privacy is priceless, but signal is expensive
- support.signal.org: Frequently asked questions about donations
(dsc/sda/dpa)
Source: Watson
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
