Signal has combined an easy way for users to report and block spam aligned from message request screens with a single mouse click. Message requests were added to Signal last year, in August 2020, to permit new users to scope out to other Signal users even if they are not in their address books and facilitate more circumstantial information to those on the accepting end.

Block and Report Spam in One Click

While users were already able to block such requests and delete them, Signal has now changed the block dialog to include a “Report Spam and Block” option to report unwanted and unsolicited messages. “To squash out spam across the network, we added recourse for recipients if an unwanted inbound message appears. When you block a user from the message request screen, you can also report the message as spam,” Signal said.

“Other services may use this as a means to gather unencrypted conversation content or to upload additional information used to discover spam operations. Signal is devoted to your privacy, and does not to do this, so we take a different approach.”

When clicking “Report Spam and Block,” your device will send both the sender’s phone number and a message ID to Signal’s servers. If the same phone number gets reported multiple times or shows signs of being used as a platform for automated spam, Signal will ask for a “proof of humanity” that will block additional messages from being sent until a challenge (e.g., a CAPTCHA) is completed.

This way of dealing with possible spammers allows Signal to slow them down while running messaging easily for regular users. Signal also changed its apps to “stop linking URLs rendered on the message request screen” as a simple measure to stop scammers from redirecting potential targets to phishing or fraud sites.

Welcome Variation after Millions currently joined Signal

These changes couldn’t have arrived at a better time after this month’s huge installation of millions of new users joining Signal following Facebook’s massive outage from early October. Signal also said it encountered its issues in the wake of Facebook’s 6-hour-long global outage after Facebook’s users joined a massive exodus to Signal’s and Telegram’s platforms.

“Signups are way up on Signal (welcome everyone!),” Signal’s social media team tweeted while Facebook was trading with the October 4th outage. “Millions of new people have joined Signal today and our messaging and calling have been up and working but some people aren’t seeing all of their contacts look on Signal. We’re working hard to fix this up.”

Currently, Signal has more than 50 million installs on Android devices and over 426,000 ratings on the Apple App Store. Pavel Durov, Telegram’s CEO and founder, calculated that over 70 million users joined in a single day due to Facebook’s downtime.