Signal has announced new functionality in its upcoming beta releases, allowing users to transfer messages and media when linking their primary Signal device to a new desktop or iPad. This feature offers the choice to carry over chats and the last 45 days of media, or to start fresh with only new messages.
The transfer process is end-to-end encrypted, ensuring privacy. It involves creating a compressed, encrypted archive of your Signal data, which is then sent to the new device via Signal’s servers. Despite handling the transfer, the servers cannot access the message content due to the encryption.
With the introduction of a cross-platform archive format, Signal is also exploring additional tools for message transfer to new devices or restoration in case of device loss or damage. Users can begin testing this feature soon, with a wider rollout expected in the coming weeks.
Why is backing up chats so important for people? I see it as an advantage that chat history evaporates eventually. Important information should be stored somewhere where it’s actually easy to find.
What could actually be easier than CTRL+F the primary source?
because believe it or not, sometimes important information gets mentioned in a normal conversation, and not everyone remembers to add it to their personal self-hosted wiki afterwards.
and some people, including myself, often go back a few years in a chat history to reference something, or reminisce.
This the kinda guy who uses terminal history to go back 4 years instead of searching for the command on the arch wiki
People have different opinions about things. Why do you think it’s good to lose chat history?
No records means an adversary can’t pull off an entire lifetime of communication history if a device is compromised. Signal is not the medium in which I’m interested in keeping records.
I see. I just don’t have adversaries, and if they got hold of the memes and inane conversations I have about whose turn it is to pick up the kid from school then good luck to them.
Ehhh, that’s an easy thought.
But what about when your memes point to you being in a group that is now illegal, or oppressed? What if something you said a year ago is now being looked for as a sign of possible opposition?
It’s nice to think “I have nothing to hide”, and for the most part, most people don’t.
But that conversation about who’s picking the kids up from school is enough to help pin down where you’ll be at a given time, when you’ll be apart from your family, it gives an insight into family dynamics, it gives hints as to your personality, and your partner’s.
You stack that with exchanges about groceries, errands, etc, and now anyone who can get access to your measures messages can predict a lot more about you
Since fascism in particular is coming back with a vengeance, your can’t even predict what you’ll be targeted for.
Now, take all of that info, combine it with location data that’s even easier for a government to get, and you’re fucked.
Don’t forget that a woman was arrested because she helped her daughter obtain abortion pills. They got the info via Facebook, but with the messages being gone would have prevented that, or made it much harder.
This is the world we live in now. None of us are safe, none of us can rely on the rule of law. It’s rolling the dice as to what can be used against you.
Same topics here, which is exactly why I have no use for archiving chats.
Why? That stuff is literally your life, it’s absurd to toss it in the void.
If you don’t have adversaries then why not use SMS? Though this just ends up with the tired old “if you have nothing to hide” argument that I’m not really interested in repeating.
Those examples also don’t sound like things you’ll need to look up months or years down the line, either. So why not just let them fade away?
SMS is inconvenient and expensive and I can’t really send SMS messages from desktop. I use IM because it’s more convenient, not because it’s more secure, though it’s a neat bonus.
And why would you not be looking that up months or years down the line? Why would you want to trash it?
I use signal for real time communication. Which is mostly casual bullshit or organizing. What exactly would I want to look up beyond say a week’s time? In-person and phone conversations fade away all the same.
Because I don’t want someone going over long-term records of my chats if my devices are ever compromised. I consider those conversations private and would rather they were forgotten than leaked.
Uhm, anything and everything? Like what “casual bullshit” you were up to or what you were “organising”?
So you don’t even wish you could preserve those?
That’s crazy to me how different some people’s idea of social relations is. Well you do you! Thanks for explaining!
I’m honestly curious and your answer just parroted what I said without explanation. Are you just sitting around reading conversations from months ago for entertainment or something? What value are you getting out of keeping chats from years ago?
Not in the slightest. For what purpose would I want that? I’m not making a This American Life podcast using my inane conversations.
I got a few people to switch from SMS to Signal because they’re on iPhones, I’m on Android, and they love sending me videos that end up totally unwatchable via MMS.
The “nothing to hide” thing is a bad argument, IMO. I’ve got nothing to hide, but I lock the bathroom door when I go in there.
Sometimes it’s been useful to go back through a chat history and find something someone said in the past. A group I’m in regularly rings up old references from a year before. I like it.
I’m a bit of a digital hoarder though. I keep blurry photos from years ago, no clue why.
They would have to have access to your account though? By that same logic whatever you do keep records in could be compromised all the same. Actually far more likely to just be lost due to hardware failure.
Should be, but sometimes it just isn’t. I’ve definitely had plenty of times where I was like, oh shit, the only place I have that information is in this chat somewhere.
Other people, kind of like me, are just data hoarders. Just because I can’t think of a use of the data now, doesn’t mean I won’t be able to think of one in the future! I have piles of old inboxes in my archives.
Convenience mostly, privacy needs to be convenient and easy for people, otherwise no one uses the tools.
This absolutely expands the threat surface in a few different ways though. It’s relatively low stakes, but it’s non zero. I have not dug into the implementation but I am curious how this doesn’t technically violate forward secrecy. A single session key will ostensibly be used to encrypt the entire session key database? Which means if that key is compromised in transit then the entire key history is compromised. Using the long term secret directly for data in transit is definitely not compliant either.
Surely when the chats are on-device they are not encrypted, or encrypted separately with an unrelated secret in storage which can be passed to another device?
You have no S.O. or friends you’d want to look back on chats with from 2-5 years ago to reminisce about how you met or something you did?
What do you even use messengers for then?
(I am genuinely curious this is not meant to sound so patronising)
No looking back.
On my side, messengers are used for daily communication, info, memes and such.
Memories are made in person or via video calls having coffee, drinking. My family and friends are scattered all over so we often drink via Signal, sync the music we listen to on both sides… All night long. 🪗 😁
Interested about video calls - do you record them as well for looking back?
No, I don’t do video calls personally other than at work.
But the vast majority of communication when not IRL to me is text so that makes sense to preserve, even info, daily communication and memes, just the kind of day to day stuff you wouldn’t “make memories” of but might want to look back on someday anyway.
I pretty regularly end up looking back on that stuff one way or another too, either just literally reminiscing or to check something or whatever.
It’s come in extremely useful, fun and has no real downsides. I can’t even imagine not doing it. Like going somewhere and not even taking a picture. What if you forget it ever happened?
How do you even build a narrative of your life? What do you do about things you forget or forget the details of like when it happened etc.?
Many times I thought something happened in e.g. January only to be proven wrong by looking up messages from that time and be proven wrong, naturally as human memory is pretty shite for the most part.
I find the idea of reminiscing over instant messages funny. Different strokes I guess.
Why?
Recently me and my gf were reminiscing about how we met and what we talked about first, since we have many common interests and we got along really well on our first date, it was interesting to go and actually look up what it was we talked about then because we couldn’t agree on what it was.
Was a shame we didn’t have our very very first messages from OkCupid but at least we had our WhatsApp and Telegram history.
On another occasion, a friend of mine was feeling nostalgic for a time we were playing through RE6 together, and I was able to go back in our chat history and find the memes we made about it at the time, full of in-jokes and whatnot and screencaps, which really cheered him up and was just fun to reminisce.
Another time I had an argument with some friends over which year we went to see A Wonderful Life in the cinema, and whether it was 2023 or 2024 and that was nice to have messages from that time to refer to and we ended up remembering a small adventure we had the same day and laugh about it.
Or what about a nice heart to heart you had? What about something kind a friend said that cheered you up you want to see again? What about some good advice someone gave you once that could come in handy now?
What about that one funny video you can only remember one bit from but you remember who you sent it to? or a song or whatever?
What about raising an issue with your partner over something bad they do and being able to directly quote examples?
Heck I used my messages from the time I moved to a new flat figure out what day I actually moved in, since the tenancy agreement was on some old portal I had no access to anymore and I needed to know the day I moved for address history on a visa application.
I guess if you’re older, you probably don’t have a lot of friends who have a phone/computer or text? To be honest I’m kind of baffled, what do you even reminisce on, if not experiences shared with others? Or do you just not like having a record of memories?
I use disappearing messages no longer than a week for all my Signal chats. Pretty surprised everyone’s out here keeping long records over this medium.
Why?
Being able to back up and then encrypt the messages on cold storage for when I may need to go back through an old conversation doesn’t negate something like disappearing messages.
It’s the best of both worlds, messages go away over time so if you lose your phone / it’s compromised, you don’t give up the goose, but you also have a nice safe stored version in the off chance you need it.
The danger imo isn’t in having the messages at all, it’s more about how, when they are just on your phone or whatever, they are generally not locked down.