271–280 of 460 posts
I am happy to see Signal charging for premium features. From a product perspective, being able to switch between two iOS devices without a 3rd iOS device shouldn’t be a premium feature. Please consider enabling local backup and restore for a single Signal instance on iOS.
I have moved Signal from an iOS device to a new iOS device multiple times. Why do you need a 3rd one?
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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…
> Once you have it on disk, how do you get it away from your phone? plug your phone into a computer? Install Termux and use one of the countless command line programs designed to transfer bits over a network?
This is not trivial when each backup archive is in the order of 20 GB.
I already pay Apple for storage, please just back up my chats/media to iCloud.
This BS is why I completely stopped donating to the signal foundation. The messages are mine, not theirs, and yet they refuse to allow me to handle them how I deem fit.
"They refuse to allow me" meaning "they don't add the features I want for free to the app they provide for free, so I complain".
The messages are yours, of course. But don't forget that you use their work for free. If you're not happy, go use the free work of someone else, I guess?
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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.
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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…
How can an encrypted backup be incremental if it's supposed to be never decrypted on-remote-machines? Ever thought about that?
The solution is to split up your data into encrypted chunks, and only upload the new ones.
Am 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.
nobody has access to your phone number from your account, and when subpoenad they are unable to provide it: https://signal.org/bigbrother/ 'the point' is spam protection, alas
That data is only protected by a pin (which can be brute forced) and SGX which has a history of being leaky. Researchers even demonstrated that data could be collected from Signal at one point. There are very likely side channel attacks that would allow Signal, or the government to collect the data stored in the cloud.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250117232443/https://www.vice....
https://web.archive.org/web/20230519115856/https://community...
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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…
Another concern should be: can you trust molly? Cryptographers have been auditing Signal... who is auditing molly?
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Hi there, Signal dev here. We are absolutely keeping the local backup feature. More than that -- we'll be improving it to also be cross-platform and incremental, meaning it'll be much faster to both create the backup as well as sync it if you use a third-party folder-syncing solution (like syncthing or something).
Will the secure backups also be incremental? I've gotten to the point where the backup takes quite a while to generate.
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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…
Are backups really necessary? I have always regarded texts (over Signal or SMS) as ephemeral. No one is or should be sending valuable information over Signal, and if you happen to receive something you want to keep, you can always do so manually.
Why should information on Signal be ephemeral on Signal? Signal is one of the few "privacy-first" services. But it is not just about privacy, it is also about having as many users as possible, which is actually important for privacy. If only people who really have "something to hide", then just using the app makes you a target. If instead it is used by millions of people for grocery shopping and dinner planning, then…