Do I get this for free if I’m a monthly donator?
Signal is open source, so security claims can be verified unlike anything made by Apple or other Big Tech companies.
What does this have to do with the message that you replied to?
Signal Secure Backups
231–240 of 460 posts
Re: Signal Secure Backups
#232Backing up Signal on Android for free and offline was ~always possible. The app creates a multi GB backup file on the phone memory under the Signal folder that you can just copy out and back on a new phone. The file is encrypted with the passcode and the database can be extracted. https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools
Yeah, didn't see it mentioned, I trust it will still be available?
I bet they'll phase it out and try to force their worse service, wherein your data is stored on their servers, like they tried to do with PINs. It took enormous pushback to get them to stop mandatory PINs, and even then they made it nagware for a year or two.
I didn't trust their rationale about PINs and remote attestation somehow meaning your data is secured by a small passphrase, just like I won't trust them to not remove a useful and existing feature I already rely on for backups.
Also not mentioned, they designed their existing backup solution to require reverse-engineered community solutions to actually access your data; I have to use a Github project to unencrypt the backup and export my chats, which is something I've never had to do with any other messenger.
Re: Signal Secure Backups
#233While we are on the topic of Signal, does anyone know if it's possible to have a lock/PIN to open the Signal app itself that's different than your device lock/PIN? Threema has this feature and it's reassuring to know that people can't open my chats when I hand my phone to someone. Or if I give the device lock/PIN to someone I trust for backup purposes but don't want them to have access to chats themselves. Last I che…
Sounds like you want Molly
For anyone else that's not familiar, this is referring to https://molly.im/ which looks like it's a fork of Signal. And looks like it interops with Signal, so you can talk to your regular Signal contacts as well.
That's very interesting.
My only concern with it would be how sustainable it is in the long term. I am using Threema currently, which has a plan for enterprises, so that seems more reliable but it's lacking in features and usability.
Re: Signal Secure Backups
#234> This has been a challenge for people whose most important conversations happen on Signal. Think family photos, sweet messages, important documents-- --or, of course, Joint Chiefs military coordination. I bet that was a fun surprise for the team.
And in that case it turns out the weakness was the device itself and the rest of the stack
Re: Signal Secure Backups
#235Re: Signal Secure Backups
#236Am I still required to add a phone number to use signal? What's the point of that. Every single person in the USA (and probably world) is quickly and trivially de-anonymized with a phone number.
This is the number one thing that is missing IMHO. I would gladly take it over back up options
Re: Signal Secure Backups
#237> alongside features that let you transfer your encrypted message history between Android, iOS, and Desktop devices. That's actually the feature I've been looking forward to. As I moved vom Android to iOS, I lost _all_ message histories from all messenger apps that use E2EE (Signal, WhatsApp, Threema, etc). The only one that "just worked" was Telegram due to not being encrypted. WhatsApp had a migration app that has…
You already can, if you at least set up desktop, you can transfer also message history, though you won't have your media older than 45 days. Maybe it can work as a stopgap before they roll out encrypeted backups everywhere
Re: Signal Secure Backups
#238@Signal devs: any reason that the only two options for backup are now "locally" (flexible, but only solves for some use-cases) or "to Signal's special servers" ( not flexible; might be legally impossible for many users to enable)? Because it seems to me that, for much of Signal's (often paranoid) audience, they'd much rather use one of the backup/sync providers they've already verified trust of, than have to addition…
I'm confused, what's stopping you from using one of the backup services you already have on the file after it's done? Since Signal would backup to a file in your phone? Couldn't you just point your service to it and automatically sync every day for example?
Re: Signal Secure Backups
#239Backing up Signal on Android for free and offline was ~always possible. The app creates a multi GB backup file on the phone memory under the Signal folder that you can just copy out and back on a new phone. The file is encrypted with the passcode and the database can be extracted. https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools
There are a couple of problems with the existing backup: 1. It is non-incremental. This means you'll need about as much free space on your phone as your Signal database takes, and it may take many hours to make if your database is large (mine is 18GB). I used to wake up to find my phone had not even fully charged because it had been so busy writing Signal backups. 2. Once you have it on disk, how do you get it away f…
USB transfer is by far the best way to transfer large amounts of data to and from phones.
Re: Signal Secure Backups
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only on Android, not iOS.
It's not Signal's fault that Apple does not let you access the most basic feature of an operating system - the filesystem.
They did support it since they released the Files app, as Signal shows. Nothing changed all these years, yet they're now rolling out backups for iOS too, so the technology is already there.