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It’s only been one week since Trump was elected as the US President for the next four years and the world has been shaking in their boots already. It’s unclear what lies ahead for industries in the country just yet, and one of those which is shrouded in that kind of uncertainty is the technology industry. Apple shares fell a bit after the President elect continued with his threat of following through with the threats which he levied against during his campaign that he wanted to impose tariffs on China.
The whole election of the New York real estate magnate led to concerns over what how his Presidency would deal with the issue of national surveillance and the encryption policy.
Trump is known to have made some comments against the San Francisco based industry and is known to have lobbied people to boycott Apple products earlier this year after the most valuable company had decided to not help the FBI unlock the iPhone which was involved in the San Bernardino shooting.
However, the concerns by the industry have now seemed to infiltrate into the public also as reports show that some privacy focused groups have seen increases in the download and sign up of their services in the aftermath of the election.
The encrypted email service, ProtonMail, reported last week that ever since the Trump win, their signup numbers had dramatically increased. The company said that ever since the rhetoric which was said by Trump towards the journalists, political enemies, immigrants, Muslims and so many other groups of people, concern has been growing that Trump could use that influence to target certain groups. And since Trump will have the NSA in his hands, he could do all of this without any legal oversight and the agency is not particularly in the public eye.
The encrypted messaging app, Signal, is also said to have increased in its number of downloads and sign ups. On the election day, the app was listed as the 98th best app in the Social Networking Category in the US App Store, but the next day it had made some significant gains and was now sitting at 45th. The next Thursday, the app was now the 34th best app on the US App Store. The same is also said have happened on the Android Google Play Store as the app moved from number 66 to 34th.
Various other Virtual Private Networks providers also saw a rise in their sign up numbers. After asking some VPN providers, the numbers were fun to peruse through. One of the VPNs, which is based in Canada, TunnelBear said that it had seen a 25 to 40 percent rise in its use and they were coming from the US.
