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Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

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Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#81

Post by adamcstephens »

KraftKacke wrote: post #12
theshrike79 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why I use Telegram, for them UX matters. Yes MTProto is not audited blah blah. I use IRC too and that has exactly butkus for encryption :D

In signal you cant delete/forget contacts... And groups will haunt you to the end of days too. I started to strongly distrust signal after I learned that. It's meta information nonetheless and invites for identity fraud. But yeah, Telegram can't be trusted either. I hope matrix/element will replace both soon.

Matrix needs better clients...

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#82

Post by Snuupy »

jl6 wrote: post #79

Is something like this possible but in reverse? Not to migrate to WhatsApp, but to export data from Signal to a neutral environment (text file, zip file, database, whatever). I can’t switch to Signal until this becomes possible.

On mobile you can do this via backups and use https://github.com/xeals/signal-back

On desktop you can copy the appdata folder over to the new device. (warning: this is not officially supported)

Note that you must close the app on desktop from the host computer before copying the files over, otherwise the forward secrecy stuff breaks and you'll have to reset the sessions on the migrated computer.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#83

Post by Arnt »

asddubs wrote: post #48
Arnt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sort of. They have their idea of what they want (approximately "security for the masses"), and if your pull request doesn't go in the same general direction they don't care about it. If it does, they're positivish but they still aren't eager about fixing your code. FWIW I've had one (very small thing) accepted and another not. That second wasn't a net positive if "security for the masses" is the only important…

what was the thing that was rejected?

I fixed handling of multiple SIM cards on MediaTek's forked Andoid, which had added multiple SIM support before Android itself did. There were bugs in the MediaTek code but Signal could be made to work. However, the code I wrote to make Signal work looked risky; it seemed possible that it might break something on other phones.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#84

Post by jsiepkes »

Lopiolis wrote: post #61
jsiepkes wrote: post #24

Can someone explain to me what use case I'm missing? Why do people care about old messages? Personally I just read incoming message and never "scroll back".

Does it matter? People care. People don't want to lose years worth of chat histories with friends, family and their significant other(s). That's just how it is. I'm not sure why it's so hotly debated around here. People want to preserve their chats and their media. There's sentimental/emotional value to these things and they don't want to lose these things. That's all that should matter. I feel like these discussions…

It matters because people don't always realize that it means making trade-off's. And people often don't know what the consequences can be of those trade-offs because they didn't realise it was a trade-off to begin with.

In case of whatsapp and keeping chat history it can mean years of chat history becoming public if for example your Apple / Google account (where whatsapp automatically stores your conversation backups) gets hacked.

Do you think the people on Parler would have used the DM function if they had realised all those DM's could become public one day? Of course not. But they simply didn't realize that the "handy" DM function meant those messages were stored somewhere and that in turns means it can all get public one day.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#85

Post by raghav_nautiyal »

mkmk2 wrote: post #80
raghav_nautiyal wrote: post #76

Is it possible for signal to act like a chat client, and allow its users to send messages via Signal to someone using WhatsApp? Not sure what protocol WhatsApp and Signal use to send messages - was just wondering since most Email clients do this using SMTP.

I wouldn't expect a project like that to go too far, I know of a couple of oss whatsapp clients that got took down, I'd assume when such a component comes online facebook would start causing trouble for them. Matrix uses bots which bridges services with services like signal, that seems to be the easiest way to achieve inter-operability, though idk how usable it is in practice.

It isn't likely Facebook is going to be in favour of such a feature, if it ever comes up. It just seems like it would be something that would give people more of an incentive to move to Signal, since they won't lose their contacts. Not sure how it would work in practice though, and how would Signal ensure the messages aren't going through to WhatsApp. Anyway, this was just a thought.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#86

Post by forgingahead »

umanghere wrote: post #58
forgingahead wrote: post #23

Is there a way to get the Whatsapp messages on iOS? Years ago they were accessible via a sqlite DB, but it's been ages since I did it, and I can't find any online resources about this other than people shilling dodgy .exe apps.

You can still pull the database from an iOS backup on your Mac or created from `idevicebackup2`. The file is named `1b6b187a1b60b9ae8b720c79e2c67f472bab09c0`, `275ee4a160b7a7d60825a46b0d3ff0dcdb2fbc9d`, or `7c7fba66680ef796b916b067077cc246adacf01d`.

Thanks very much! This does indeed work, for anyone else keen to do so using OSX:

1. Make sure you've recently backed up your iPhone

2. Open up terminal and $ open ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup

3. Pick the relevant Backup folder (look at the most recently updated column)

4. To find the files mentioned by umanghere, go to the folder with the relevant starting characters. Eg: 7c7xxx is in the '7c' folder.

5. Find the file and open using any SQLite browser. For OSX, this is a decent and simple option: https://sqlitebrowser.org/

From there, once you figure out the tables, you can ostensibly write a script to also migrate your chats from Whatsapp to Signal.

For media transfer, this may also be helpful (though I haven't tried it myself): https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/365950/accessing-w...

I may write a script for this if I get a weekend free soon, but happy if anyone else does it as well.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#87

Post by hiq »

jsiepkes wrote: post #24

Can someone explain to me what use case I'm missing? Why do people care about old messages? Personally I just read incoming message and never "scroll back".

It's nice to store any information that's nice to have, but not important enough to expressly record somewhere. "search, don't sort" applies especially well to this kind of info.

Addresses were already mentioned, but that also applies to IBAN, email addresses, door codes, restaurants...

It's also some kind of light diary: you can easily deduce what you were doing on a certain day if you look at the corresponding message.

For me it's not important enough that I would want to migrate it to another app if I were switching (I'd just save the DB), but it's not completely useless either. And of course some people just store everything there, including things that were not messages in the first, just like they do with email. You can argue that they shouldn't, but if that's what they want...

Obviously that's also a privacy risk, e.g. in case you lose your phone. There are many countries where I wouldn't keep my chat history for more than one week.

Re: Signal Fork with WhatsApp Migration

#88

Post by jl6 »

Snuupy wrote: post #82
jl6 wrote: post #79

Is something like this possible but in reverse? Not to migrate to WhatsApp, but to export data from Signal to a neutral environment (text file, zip file, database, whatever). I can’t switch to Signal until this becomes possible.

On mobile you can do this via backups and use https://github.com/xeals/signal-back On desktop you can copy the appdata folder over to the new device. (warning: this is not officially supported) Note that you must close the app on desktop from the host computer before copying the files over, otherwise the forward secrecy stuff breaks and you'll have to reset the sessions on the migrated computer.

Is there an equivalent for iOS?
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