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Signal Secure Backups

signal.org

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Re: Signal Secure Backups

#371

Post by palata »

Y-bar wrote: post #344
palata wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

They are somewhat correct though, Signal has written code explicitly to prevent iOS users from including Signal data in Apple’s encrypted local and/or cloud backups. Allowing encrypted backups was free for Signal, but they spent time and money to prevent it for iOS users. Part of the code the wrote to prevent backups in question: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/blob/5590f09c3643f12...

It would be interesting to have Signal's justification for that, but I can totally imagine that it is a security feature.

As in: they may not want their users to inadvertently share their Signal messages with Apple.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#372

Post by palata »

gardnr wrote: post #326
palata wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being able to switch between two iOS devices without a 3rd iOS device I have moved Signal from an iOS device to a new iOS device multiple times. Why do you need a 3rd one?

I have two phone numbers.

On the same iOS device? I didn't know that iPhones supported multiple SIMs!

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#373

Post by [deleted] »

aprilnya wrote: post #314
akkartik wrote: post #4

This looks brilliant. I just hope they make it easy to do test restores. In particular, I want to test restore without perturbing my main device. Let me restore using the secret key on a new device. When I install Signal on a computer it won't show me message history. Will backups allow me to view _all_ my message history on a computer? A big screen is very helpful for browsing lots of messages.

As of a few months ago, when setting up Desktop you do actually get an option to copy your message history to it

[deleted]

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#374

Post by JoshTriplett »

SwamyM wrote: post #214

While 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…

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-set-up-android-guest-mode-47...

https://www.howtogeek.com/806247/how-to-set-up-androids-gues...

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#375

Post by JoshTriplett »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #129

perhaps said too much on a whim, but why should I backup my Signal... or WhatsApp, or any other communications. live in the moment. let things pass. there is probably no fortune hidden in it anyway...

If you don't want to back it up, don't back it up.

I'd like to replace all my SMS usage with Signal. I have every text message and photo I've ever sent/received. I want to do the same with Signal.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#376

Post by pSYoniK »

This is really great. I've managed to convert a few people to talk over Signal and while I am backing up my chats to my home server (I see you will be offering something like this in the future), this wasn't really an option for the people I converted over to Signal, so they were constantly afraid that they might lose the pictures or the chats if something happened to their phone.

I know, you can download media and save it through something else, but most people just opt-in whatever is default. I think my only suggestion would be to make it real clear or even maybe have some sort of counter that says something like "39 images are no longer backed up" or "8374 media items are NOT being backed up, 507 are in backup, 29 will be removed tomorrow". This could be directly on the backup page, I'm not currently running the beta build as I installed the apk, but if it's already on there, scratch the feedback!

Thank you again for all your hard work on this, it really is appreciated (financially too!)

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#377

Post by varenc »

Silhouette wrote: post #298
varenc wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with the sentiment, but I can understand why they don't offer this. Rational or not, people will feel less safe if all their messages can just be easily exported to plaintext. A few scenarios where this might matter like the 'evil maid attack' where someone briefly has access to your unlocked phone. But I just use this project to export my signal messages to plaintext: https://github.com/tbvdm/sigtop I have it…

Rational or not, people will feel less safe if all their messages can just be easily exported to plaintext. IMHO the point is that it's not rational. Signal is as vulnerable to the analogue hole as any other messaging platform that displays the messages on a phone screen. There was never any credible way to prevent someone who has received your message from keeping or passing on the information it contained. The idea…

People aren't rational/perfect and Signal wants to keep them feeling safe? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(and IMHO there are edge case scenario where the additional friction in exporting messages provides some protection. Particularly when your threat model involves imperfect actors)

edit: here's an example. Let's say I use 4 week disappearing message with everyone I chat with. That's imperfect of course, but let's say right now only about 5% of the people I chat with are proactively backing up/screenshotting my disappearing messages and the rest let messages expire. If Signal rolled out an "export all messages to plaintext" feature, then suddenly that 5% might become 50%. And now a lot more of my messages which used to disappear, are being preserved.

If everyone I chat with is a perfect 'threat actor' that always backups up every message they ever receive, then there's no difference at all. But most people aren't, so practically there's a big difference because now exporting to plaintext (and bypassing time restrictions) is trivial for the masses.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#378

Post by dewey »

the_gipsy wrote: post #369
szszrk wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your alternative? Keep doing voluntary donations and wait for rich people to throw 50mil at it again?

Personally, I eat the cost of self hosting a small matrix homeserver. For developing a commercial project, I don't have an alternative, because e.g. being upfront and saying that you will eventually screw over your users eventually, is not an option in this economy.

Asking to users to for a non-free service you are receiving isn't "screw over your users".

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#379

Post by anilakar »

poisonborz wrote: post #361
anilakar wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you restore the backup on a new phone, you'll have to resync all desktop machines, and at least on Windows syncing old messages has never worked for me.

Signal never syncs old messages on secondary clients for security reasons.

They do. They also offer to do it when you link your desktop client, and like I said, it works on Linux but gives an error message on Windows.

Also, considering that linking requires access to your existing device I don't see an issue with that. Moxie himself considered usability to be more important than tinfoil hat-level crypto because large-scale adoption is what enables security.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#380

Post by internet_points »

arccy wrote: post #247
nikeee wrote: post #212

> 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…

doesn't signal also have a transfer to other device flow now?

iOS to iOS works

Android to Android works

iOS to/from Android does not work

stolen phone to new phone does not work :)

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