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Signal Secure Backups

signal.org

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Re: Signal Secure Backups

#431

Post by prism56 »

internet_points wrote: post #394
prism56 wrote: post #188

Finally installed signal. I have 220 phone contacts and 1 had it installed. Uphill battle here. WhatsApp and imessage are so prevalent in the UK

Meanwhile in Norway, of 520 phone contacts (of which many are things like cabs, restaurants, realtor from way back when) – 83 are on signal. And it's not like I have particularly privacy-conscious friends, that I know of.

That is an interesting datapoint. I'm going to keep it installed, hopefully then if somebody I know does install it they will see i'm a user.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#433

Post by palata »

Y-bar wrote: post #421
palata wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should I not be allowed to Same as I said above: you are asking for a new feature. Their default is those 20 lines that "protect" the files. If they want to offer you a way to still enable it, someone has to do it. Someone has to work on the UX of it, maybe there is a need to explain to the users why it is less secure when this feature is enabled, and then there is work to do with the criticisms that will come…

> you are asking for a new feature I think we have vastly different definitions of what is a "new" feature. This is not about adding a new feature, but removing an old bug. > If they want to offer you a way to still enable it, someone has to do it. They can just use the iOS system settings to allow users to enable/disable backups. This would be zero code needed. Zero maintainability problems. Zero UX. Zero unexpected…

I understand that you are frustrated. And I understand that if you were to write Signal, you would do it differently.

Still, those 20 lines don't look like a bug to me. And Signal does not benefit from pissing you off. I was just trying to say that maybe, just maybe, there is a valid reason behind this.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#434

Post by palata »

gardnr wrote: post #430
palata wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, didn't know it was possible to have multiple numbers on the same iPhone :D

It's been a very pro-user development. You can buy an eSIM using an app these days. So when you travel, you can just download an eSIM for the country you are visiting if your home provider doesn't offer competitive international packages.

I must have been living under a rock, I didn't know that.

So you're saying that I can buy a cheap eSIM for just a couple weeks in a country? Don't they require to verify my identity and all that?

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#435

Post by palata »

gardnr wrote: post #429
palata wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah! You can have many eSIMs, but the iPhone only has two radios, so only two SIMs can be "active" (connected to towers) at any time. Signal doesn't support multiple phone numbers on the same device. I have two phones: 1. Old iPhone: +55-555-5555 2. New iPhone: +1-867-5309 I would prefer to have the numbers swapped on the devices. There isn't a way to do this without "transferring"[1] the messages to a 3rd iOS devic…

> This is an awkward edge-case that would be ameliorated by allowing local file backup / restore.

Feels like it would be better to support multiple phone numbers on the same device. But yeah... that's work and probably not a super common use-case.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#436

Post by gardnr »

palata wrote: post #434
gardnr wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a very pro-user development. You can buy an eSIM using an app these days. So when you travel, you can just download an eSIM for the country you are visiting if your home provider doesn't offer competitive international packages.

I must have been living under a rock, I didn't know that. So you're saying that I can buy a cheap eSIM for just a couple weeks in a country? Don't they require to verify my identity and all that?

I don’t know how it works but I would guess that the KYC stuff happens with the resellers (who make the apps). So the resellers have some due diligence of identity verification then they make some guarantees to the telcos. Otherwise, it would be a vector for scams and crime.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#438

Post by nuker »

greysonp wrote: post #67
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.

Hi there, Signal dev here. You can sort of do this! You can restore on your new device, and while you will be unregistered on your old device, all of the data is still there. So if you see that something is amiss on the new device, you could re-register on your old device and you'd be right back where you started. This is actually one of the ways we test the feature with our own personal data.

Im still out of luck, I want to reinstall my iPhone (not a transfer to another phone) and cannot find a way to preserve chats.

Signal Desktop app on Mac linked, shows chats, but all pics are missing and "Download Failed" if clicked.

And I'm not sure I can import from Desktop back to my erased iPhone...

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#439

Post by AnonC »

palata wrote: post #434
gardnr wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a very pro-user development. You can buy an eSIM using an app these days. So when you travel, you can just download an eSIM for the country you are visiting if your home provider doesn't offer competitive international packages.

I must have been living under a rock, I didn't know that. So you're saying that I can buy a cheap eSIM for just a couple weeks in a country? Don't they require to verify my identity and all that?

Identity verification depends on the country. In certain cases there may be limitations. There are many eSIM sellers, like Airalo, Jetpac, Saily, Holafly and more. You can buy the eSIM with an eSIM package (for data, mostly, but some also sell voice/SMS) for a country or region, activate it (or wait for it to activate when the phone connects to a local network at the destination) and use it.

It’s so simple and convenient. Once you’ve returned back, you don’t necessarily have to delete the eSIM from the device. The iPhone models that have had eSIM support allow you to have a total of eight eSIMs on the device. You can activate (i.e., turn on) only two lines at any point in time.

So even if you have two numbers where you live, you can turn one off, use that slot and turn on your travel eSIM and then later switch back.

All the eSIM sellers provide clear and detailed instructions on how to install and activate the eSIM.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#440

Post by AnonC »

palata wrote: post #398
Y-bar wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lot's of people have requested justification in related Github issues there, but Signal has not given a clear answer. If there was a security problem with the encryption process I believe a CVE or similar would have been in order because it would affect millions of users.

I was not talking about a security flaw. I was saying that maybe , Signal did not want to push their users to trust the Apple backup by default. Signal is a nonprofit foundation, it's not like they are trying to squeeze their users with their own secure backup.

> I was saying that maybe, Signal did not want to push their users to trust the Apple backup by default.

The gap in understanding here is that Signal already trusts iOS by providing an app. It trusts it even more by providing notifications (with sender and content) that go through Apple’s systems. It integrates with CallKit to work with the Phone app. Putting iCloud alone in a separate bucket doesn’t make sense. They could’ve done this same backup with a 64 character recovery key and stored the data in iCloud. Signal made an intentional choice not to allow backups on iOS.

One can only hope that the point about supporting other backup endpoints/storage gets implemented sooner rather than having to wait several more years.

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