Signal: Operation will soon cost 50 million dollars per year
In an unusual move, the encrypted chat service Signal has made its costs public. The company will need around 50 million dollars (46 million euros) a year by 2025, it said in a blog post on Thursday. Currently, salaries and other personnel expenses with around 50 full-time employees amount to 19 million dollars. The bandwidth required for data transmission alone costs 2.8 million dollars a year.
Signal consistently relies on so-called end-to-end encryption, in which the content of the communication is only visible to those involved in plain text. Messages are therefore only stored temporarily on the company's servers for transmission. This also costs 1.3 million dollars a year.
Signal's encryption technology is used by chat service WhatsApp, among others. Signal is not profit-oriented and is operated by a foundation. The service wants to finance itself in the long term with the help of a broad base of donors, wrote foundation chair Meredith Whittaker in the blog post. So far, Signal has been helped by a million-dollar donation from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton. He had received part of the more than 20 billion dollars that Facebook paid for WhatsApp and was subsequently one of the co-founders of the Signal Foundation.
To ensure data protection, Signal regularly invests in advanced telecommunications infrastructure. This includes maintaining and updating their computer systems, which is an ongoing expense that adds to their annual budget.
In addition to managing its financial needs, Signal also advocates for stronger Internet regulation to promote data protection and privacy rights for its users.
Source: www.dpa.com
