zlacker

>>mikece+(OP)
Personally, I refuse to financially support Signal so long as they're still holding my chat logs hostage on my old iPhone and seem not at all concerned about solving this problem, which has existed for years.

There was (and still is, so far as I know) no upfront warning to users that if they don't first sync with a desktop client, and their phone gets lost or stolen, their iTunes backups do not (unlike most iPhone applications) contain their Signal chats. And furthermore, there's no way to export those chats in backup format from an old phone.

(You can transfer, but the transfer deletes the data from the original source, which is extremely foolish and dangerous IMO, and anyways isn't a proper export accessible from other applications. Furthermore, so far as I know there's no support for transferring from very old versions of the Signal client.)

This has been a critical bug for years [1], it's one of the most complained about issues, and Signal has done (and intends to do) absolutely nothing to fix it. It is absolutely unacceptable to have our own data held hostage by them in this way, especially without any upfront warning.

[1] https://community.signalusers.org/t/ios-backup-keeping-messa...

>>DavidS+JZ
Interesting, I always saw this as a deliberate feature aligned with what I first came across Signal for (sensitive communications between trusted parties that may need wiping at a moment's notice). If a journo reporting in a less than hospitable regime had their phone confiscated then they need not worry about their chat logs compromising them.

>>bhtru+K01
Sorry, how is this any safer for the journalist? If their phone is compromised in a way such that someone can login and control their Signal app, their chat logs are already compromised. I’m just saying there should be the ability to export those logs once you’ve logged in.

But if they don’t want to provide that, then:

1) Why does the Android app support this?

2) They should warn users of this BEFORE holding their data hostage, and not market Signal like it’s the right solution for everyone.