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Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

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Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#511

Post by athrun »

Kiro wrote: post #347
throwawayben wrote: post #49

The comments here are so bizarre to me. I think this must be a USA thing. I had no idea signal even supported SMS, nor do I know anybody who uses SMS

Where do you live where people do not use SMS? In most countries I've been to and lived in in Europe SMS was very much used.

Europe is a big place, but indeed I'd say in most of EU using SMS to communicate between people is a bit old school. I'd say most people have moved to WhatsApp (or equivalent).

SMS is typically used for notifications-style messaging (or spam), so the impact of this change is probably minimal for a lot of people there. Even chat-bot/support style messaging in the B2C space are moving to WhatsApp (or equivalent).

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#512

Post by godelski »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #504
daedalus_j wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. It's fair, I was not specific enough with my feature request.

But I think that's what godelski is saying is a bit of a contradiction. If this "accessible searchable archive" is stored "off of the device", how exactly would the device access and search the archive? Facebook can store your Facebook Chat history on their servers no problem, but E2E encryption makes this much more complicated for Signal! It's not impossible , Apple does it with iMessage, although that was actually…

> But I think that's what godelski is saying is a bit of a contradiction.

Exactly. I'm saying you can't have both low storage and full chat history. These two cannot work without a storage server. I have suggested a method of using the desktop client as the storage server but I agree that there is no great solution.

> It's not impossible, Apple does it with iMessage

That does come with significant tradeoffs though. Now we have to trust Apple that they haven't taken our keys and that they still aren't handing over this data. It is a tricky situation.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#513

Post by anigbrowl »

cassonmars wrote: post #409
anigbrowl wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about a hosting server? Why isn't there a simple option to export a conversation to local storage , encrypted or unencrypted, along with a warning that 'your conversation is now leaving the secure Signal zone.'

For starters, signal retains a conversation for the length of time you grant. That can be indefinite. The way it is retained is in a local storage database. It is intentionally guarded against export (although this is somewhat unavoidable with backup features on phones), so as to avoid companies like Cellebrite making it easy for LE to overstep their bounds and pull the message database when they take your phone. If…

I don't want to be handcuffed for my own security, thanks. An export facility has little bearing on the integrity of my communications since a counterparty could simply have their phone taken over if they forgot to set a PIN or gave the PIN up to law enforcement. A warning that the exported data can no longer be considered secure (just like when I save a file or photo) is sufficient.

Meanwhile if my counterparty and I have communications in Signal that we want to preserve at scale, it's impossible to do so. A simple example would be that I have years' worth of conversations with my wife that I can't easily back up any where. We could export every picture and video by hand and screenshot or copy the text of every message, but that would be extremely time-consuming and tedious.

That's the basic problem. The data is already only semi-secure in that it's subject to exfiltration without consent. It's just inconvenient. And where parties do consent, it's very inconvenient because it's many many hours of work; in the end, it's just more security theater.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#514

Post by anigbrowl »

chopin wrote: post #431
anigbrowl wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about a hosting server? Why isn't there a simple option to export a conversation to local storage , encrypted or unencrypted, along with a warning that 'your conversation is now leaving the secure Signal zone.'

It's not only your conversation but the one of others too. I like that it's hard to move it elsewhere.

But I could just screenshot all of it, and you'd never know. There's a setting to prevent screenshots, but no way to tell if other persons have it enabled or when their setting change.

It's like when Signal asks you to put in your PIN, but it's the same PIN you use to unlock your phone. There's a different Signal PIN, but that functions as a check for when you install Signal on a new device. Your regular PIN is just a repeat of your phone PIN, and thus adds exactly zero security.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#515

Post by godelski »

daedalus_j wrote: post #484
godelski wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My ideal solution would be to export any message older than a month to an archive on my NAS I'm confused at what is stopping you from doing this? > ideally in a format that the app could search on request. Are you not able to import these backups into the desktop client? IIRC it is just reading from a file structure. I don't see why a small script couldn't resolve this. Obviously you wouldn't be able to search on y…

> I'm confused at what is stopping you from doing this? As far as I know the backup is encrypted. > Are you not able to import these backups into the desktop client? No, the desktop client is not standalone, and ONLY syncs with the a phone to get content. Moreover, if you don't use the client for a period (2-3 weeks in my experience?) it de-syncs that desktop client. Re-connecting that desktop to your phone will only…

I was more thinking to port chats from your phone to the desktop. The desktop client is on the NAS and serves as the "storage" where you can search your full backup. I would guess there would be a more difficult solution where you could hack the phone app to sync all data instead of just when your desktop connects. So that solution might take more than just a Saturday night ;)

I agree that there aren't really any great solutions. But the alternative is that Signal stores your data. I think this would make a lot of users very upset and compromise part of Signal's core mission.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#516

Post by wardedVibe »

throwawayben wrote: post #49

The comments here are so bizarre to me. I think this must be a USA thing. I had no idea signal even supported SMS, nor do I know anybody who uses SMS

Why the rest of the world has converged on using a free closed source messaging service by a for profit company because of the privacy boggles my mind. I'd rather just stick with SMS if I can't feasibly use signal.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#517

Post by folmar »

pmlnr wrote: post #250
dane-pgp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatsapp and Signal are walled gardens. Until next year? https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220701IP...

No. Secrecy will have backdoor keys, but that is not what walled garden means: it means more like people have no power over the decisions made in the garden.

That's what OP was referring to.

"... those designated as gatekeepers will have to: allow third parties to inter-operate with their own services, meaning that smaller platforms will be able to request that dominant messaging platforms enable their users to exchange messages, send voice messages or files across messaging apps. ..."

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#518

Post by anigbrowl »

godelski wrote: post #459
anigbrowl wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be confused? 'I'd take a decent "export my chats" option' is a very simple statement. There is no way within Signal to just export a whole conversation to a file.

> There is no way within Signal to just export a whole conversation to a file. You can on Android and Desktop. On Mac see ~/Library/Application\ Support/Signal for your data. The only issue is with iOS which I agree is an issue, but does not seem to be the parent's issue.

No you can't. You can find that info at the OS level, or if you use the beta you could get at it via the Developer tools (since it's just a specialized browser window), but there's no userland option to export your conversation in the application.

That's why I wrote 'within Signal.'

As a simple example of how this could get messy, suppose I wanted to back up all my Signal messages, install a different operating system, install Signal there, and load up my old messages. I do have the IT skills to just find the database file and move it manually, but I'm only confident about that because I know its an SQLite database, where the keys are stored etc.

It's still an IT problem I would prefer not to have, vs the simple option of 'Do you want to export this conversation, with all the security implications Y/N' or 'Import this previously archived conversation?'

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#520

Post by folmar »

_-david-_ wrote: post #226
bee_rider wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Telegram partially closed source?

There is an unofficial FOSS version. I'm not sure if it is feature complete, secure, etc. https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS

It is. It's the official app with misfeature removed.
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