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.

>>DavidS+021
Wouldn't it be more damaging if the authorities are able to sync and recover the chat logs (they had time wipe the logs)?

If they are able to take the journalist's sim card which is linked to their Signal account and then are able to recover the chat logs the journalist would be done for.

Of course the supposed journalist we're speaking of is already in a bad spot if they're interred. However, they might have plausible deniability with respect to their phone if there's no compromising chat logs to recover.

To your point about exporting, it would be nice. Ultimately, why can't we have both worlds by way of toggling the function?

>>bhtru+zq1
I’m certainly not proposing that access to your SIM card should allow authorities to sync your messages! They should be stored encrypted on-device, and only exportable if you have login access to that device.

If authorities do acquire login access to the device, they can scroll through your chats and make screenshots, with or without an export feature. It’s true that exports make it slightly more convenient for them, but if you’re a serious target they’ll do it the hard way.

If Signal wants to provide some opt-in to disable exports, which can’t be retroactively reversed for old chats (otherwise it’s pointless), I have no problem with that. But if you’re worried about authorities with login access to your device, you shouldn’t be storing logs at all.