Comment by DavidSJ
2 years ago
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...
I completely agree with you, even though the situation is at least a tad better on the Android side... However, it's worth noting that Signal seems to consider this a feature and not a bug.
I hate that. I use signal to chat with my friends. We trade pictures of our cats. I am not a whistleblower who needs my data deleted instantly for safety. I provide the noise that acts as cover for those people. And I would have a LOT easier time bringing onto the network if they were able to keep that chat history. (I take a backup on Android and export it and clean my Signal install periodically because it gets large and starts taking up too much space on my device.)
I love Signal. I want it to succeed. I think they have a little bit of problem understanding who their users actually are though, or perhaps just a disconnect with telling us who the users they want to have are...
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.
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.
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?
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Perhaps Signal is not the right choice for you? It seems odd to be so concerned about data retention from a system which prominently features support for disappearing messages!
I expect messages to disappear when I turn on disappearing messages and not when I don’t turn them on.
But yes, I agree it’s not the right choice for me and many others who want to have full ownership over our data, and they should make that clear in advance.
> But yes, I agree it’s not the right choice for me and many others who want to have full ownership over our data,
The whole point of Signal is you have full ownership of your data. You said you can transfer the data to another device, right? I get that inability to export cleanly is an annoying bug, but technically you have full control over your data the whole time. It seems to me that it's easier to guarantee no one else can get your data (at the expense of data export friction), than it is to provide "do anything you might want with your data" while still guaranteeing privacy.
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> It is absolutely unacceptable to have our own data held hostage by them
Most likely this is just one of the walls of the walled garden.