Telegram Messenger LLP surpassed 500 million monthly active users in the first week of January, CEO Pavel Durov said in a Jan. 12 post on the platform.

The executive added that its users continued to increase as the company saw 25 million new users in the last 72 hours. Of the new users, 38% came from Asia, 27% from Europe, 21% from Latin America and 8% from the Middle East and North African region.

In comparison, Telegram saw daily sign-ups of about 1.5 million users in 2020.

Meanwhile, another messaging service, Signal, had about 7.5 million downloads globally across Apple Inc.'s App Store and Google LLC's Play Store from Jan. 6 to Jan. 10, Business Insider reported Jan. 13, citing data from app analytics company SensorTower Inc.

The surge in downloads for Telegram and Signal comes as Facebook Inc.-owned WhatsApp Inc. updated its policy on data collection.