- cross-posted to:
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
- cross-posted to:
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
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.
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I’m still waiting for the day that I can make a full backup of my chats and save it on an external hard drive so that I won’t lose all of my message history when I lose my phone.
You can on Android. If you have an iPhone you can link using the molly signal fork on an android device and then backup using that.
Oooh interesting! Could you please elaborate / share any resources about this?
Here’s a link to their website https://molly.im/ It also links to their GitHub. If you’d want to backup what you’d do is link molly to your iphone signal instance and then the Android client or molly android client of signal allows you to make local backups on device.
Restoring it back to the iPhone won’t be possible but there’s a backup at least. Or rather maybe with that recent change the article talks about it might be possible in the future but not currently afaik.
This is wonderful, thank you so much!
I’ve been holding off from switching to Android (and getting a GrapheneOS x Pixel phone) because I have 5 years’ worth of messages on Signal on my iPhone… I’ll look into this method for sure
I just set up molly today, along with mollysocket and an ntfy server. Liking it so far, just need to get my friends to migrate…
That’s always the hard part.
You can already do it. I have Signal create daily backups, sync it to my NAS using Syncthing with versioning enabled.
Oh fucking shit, setting this up today
I still wait for an option to officially use signal without having to have a proprietary operating system running 😆🥲
And I am waiting for a way to use Signal without it ever touching a smartphone) Right now I have a Graphene phone so I can trust it (so Molly works), but before that my phone (like most phones) did not support any degoogled OS. While the laptop (like most laptops can) was running Linux easily. Yet, you have to either use an Android VM or a frustrating command-line client to register!
Yea, that was what I meant to say with my comment 😄 linux phone gang rise up!
Thanks, I love Signal, but can we get Android tablet linking?
Molly has it.
What’s Molly in this context?
in this context? haha
See the other response to justify that part, heh.
A hardened Signal fork that works with Signal’s servers and adds features I like that Signal doesn’t support.
I heard signal dislikes forks using its server, did molly get approval to do so, or is this based on generosity until signal can ban them?
I heard that too…1ish years ago and Molly still seems to work okay. I would assume by now that Signal knows they exist, so hopefully they’ll keep playing nice.
TIL. Thank you!
A good time 🌚
That’s why “in this context”!
Still a good time in that context 🤭
Fair enough.
This may be out of date, since it’s been a while since I last tested this, but: will Signal on desktop still store media in an easily accessible folder where the only security is the use of random strings to identify each individual media file with the file type extension deleted? So, for example, if you’ve had the desktop Signal client synced with your account for a period of time and have running conversations that include sensitive media, that media can be accessed and viewed without even opening the desktop app (which also, last I tested it, lacks most of the locking/security mechanisms found in the phone versions of Signal).
Most media viewers can open the files without the need for adding the file extension to the end of the filename, albeit you would be browsing the files in a pseudorandom fashion if you didn’t try to sort by date or size.
It is quite a bit out of date luckily. Signal-Desktop already stores data encrypted for quite a while. However it used to store the decryption key right alongside it. Recently (a few month ago) Signal switched to storing the key within the systems keystore, greatly improving security. Also causing a flood of users complaining that the can’t just copy their .config to a new desktop and retain their chat history. This may have prompted the release of this new feature :)
😂and 98% do upvote this old news, it is crazy
Good to know!
Original announcement: https://signal.org/blog/a-synchronized-start-for-linked-devices/
Blogs like these drive me fucking crazy: there’s a primary source out there, why not just link to that at the end of your (evidently pointless) opinion piece?
It’s almost like they know their commentary isn’t adding anything and they’re worried we’ll click away immediately.
Maybe OP is following said blog and got their info from there, then thought that it might be worth sharing?
I’m not harping on OP. If they thought it was worth sharing, great.
The people whom I take umbrage with are those who make a blog post that is reporting on a public announcement (E.g. Signal’s news post on their website) without linking to said announcement.
You’re not talking about world events with your reporter on the scene - your entire post is literally “someone else posted something to the internet!”; linking to it is the bare minimum required, if you ask me.
Unfortunately it seems like some people think that that is neutral.
Yay Signal!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Same topics here, which is exactly why I have no use for archiving chats.
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.
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.
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.
Do they allow you to use it without a phone number yet?
You need a phone number to register but then you can create a username and choose to hide your number
Yes. For quite a while now.
Not when I created one a week or two ago. Still requested a phone number before moving to the next step.
Might be dependent on location?
Yeah looks like you still need a number to sign up for an account :(
Ah, sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were asking if they had usernames that could be used in lieu of a phone number as a contact.
