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.
Do they allow you to use it without a phone number yet?
When they gonna allow sign up without a phone number. Or allow federation with 3rd party signal severs. Or allow sign up without a phone number that’s linked to ur real identity by law in most countries.
The more I learn about signal the less I trust them.
The day security researchers say Signal is bad is the day I’ll stop using it. Until then, it’s the best option we have that both provides both great privacy and UX. The only thing that comes close - and it still has a ways to go - is SimpleX, but it’s basically a signal fork and it’s devs still support Signal.
Security researchers always look at a specific thing, usually the encryption only. The message encryption of Signal is great, the problem is all the rest of it that never gets scrutinized that closely.
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 already do it. I have Signal create daily backups, sync it to my NAS using Syncthing with versioning enabled.
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.
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.
