Because they haven’t figured out how to do that securely?

What I don't understand here (though admittedly I haven't been following the iOS discussions closely) is why backups are possible on Android but not on iOS?

As I understand it, iOS backups normally go to iCloud -- where they're stored encrypted but the keys are held by Apple (i.e. not end-to-end encrypted, and not a zero-knowledge system by any stretch).

So, I have stopped this, because I do not use iCloud. Can I enable backups?

Nothing stops Signal from E2E encrypting backups on their side.

The backups on Android are near useless as well - they expect users to remember and save a massively long string of numbers (that are pre-generated, so they can't even choose a password they remember) and then they only do backup manually and onto device storage where it'll be gone together with everything else on the device if it breaks or dies.

Getting that backup off the device is yet another manual process for most users they need to think about.

Compare this to Telegram: user doesn't have to do anything.

Compare this to iMessage: user doesn't have to do anything.

Compare this to WhatsApp: user just needs to click agree.

The last two even save backups in an E2E encrypted fashion unreadable by servers.

That was not my question.

In any case, I actually prefer it the way Signal does because

1) I don't have to sign up for / rely on a cloud provider,

2) if need be, I can decrypt the backup on my own and export it to some other format.

> then they only do backup manually

Wrong. The backup can be done automatically (i.e. every day).

Then do it insecurely and warn the user. 'We can't figure out how to do this securely' is their BS excuse for every bad design decision or unimplemented feature.

You might say 'but they don't want to make people less secure, people will get the wrong idea!' But they do this already, in ways that are much worse than allowing the user to make a security decision for themselves.

You can change a setting to prevent screenshots inside the Signal phone app, so you can't take screenshots. Your conversations are now secure, right? Nobody can take pictures of your disappearing messages! WRONG. You can turn on that feature and I can still take screenshots all day, including disappearing messages that you send to me.

Likewise, Signal can't tell if you're downloading pictures or copying text I send to you. You could be backing up everything - my only 'assurance' is that you probably aren't doing it because it's inconvenient.

You can change disappearing messages timer to anything you want! Great! But the change of timer is itself a message. So if we are arrested and police get into one person's Signal, they can see when disappearing messages were turned on and when the timer was lengthened or shortened. Sure, the messages disappeared, but what were you doing on August 23rd at 7:39pm that made you change the timer to 10 minute4s for 3 hours? We know where you were because of your phone's IMEI, I guess we will tell the court that you were trying to cover something up during those 3 hours and charge you with obstruction of justice.

I have asked them to change the latter behavior repeatedly, explaining why it could be a problem for users, and all I ever hear is 'good point, we'll look into it' even though there's no reason that information should be stored.

Your former examples are things that quite simply can’t be mitigated in any case. If you want to send a message to someone there is no way to prevent them from storing it in a way you control.

Your latter example is also a security concern they can’t address. A jurisdiction that allows a message about a settings change being used as a basis for obstruction of justice can rule the use of signal as the same (though I do agree that former is problematic on its face).

I dont know the ins and outs of the problems with backups, but it doesn’t take a phd in cryptography to envision a case where your settings about backups open all your contacts to automated dragnet surveillance. In that case it doesn’t make sense for a single user to downgrade everyone else’s security settings.

I'm not saying they can be mitigated, I'm saying that casual users have the illusion of security through settings that seem to mitigate security concerns, but don't.

The disappearing message timer history could absolutely be mitigated by simply not retaining that information or timestamping it.

If you could export/back up single conversations, you would have much more granularity than exporting or backing up your entire message database. Other people could also get a message that the conversation had been exported. there are lots of cases where you might want to do this by mutual agreement, but it isn't possible.

They figured out how to do secure stories and crypto payments but not how to store an encrypted file like all other messengers?

C'mon, don't bs us :)

I don't know about other platforms, but Signal on Android supports backing up to a file, as well as direct transfer of data to another phone.

It supports backing up to a file that you can't specify. This is unhelpful in many use cases.

Example: I am running out of space on my phone. I look, and see Signal is taking 4gb of space. But I would like to preserve a lot of that media. So I buy a mini-SD card and install it in my phone. Yay! Now to turn on Signal chat backups!

Oh, but the backups are hardcoded to a location on your primary storage that you can't change. so even though I have 126gb of free space on the SD card I installed, I can't back Signal up to it and I am still running out of space.

My only option is to try removing every other app I have installed, and hope there is enough space reclaimed to perform a backup, which I can then copy off my system so I can reinstall my apps...WTF.

Meanwhile there is no way to back up a single chat. You can archive it, but that just removes it from your Signal home screen, it doesn't actually create an archive of any kind. And there is no way to back anything up on desktop.

This isn't a feature, it's an antipattern.

Even a cynic like me wouldn't go so far as to assume bad intent here. Signal is open source so the file format should be readable and likely this is just an oversight, I guess it's not a highly requested feature. Have you filed an issue?

I never said anything about intent. If it's an oversight then maybe they should be thinking a little harder and listening to feedback from beta testers, of which I am one.

Backing up to the same device on which are running out of space is an extremely obvious problem, to which the solution is to just ask the user where they want the backup stored instead of deciding for them.

Repeatedly refusing to fix this widely reported issue with non-sensical explanations does imply bad intent.

In the beginning, it might have been an oversight. Now moxie is just making seriously misleading arguments on behalf of people he doesn't know to make their service worse.

> Repeatedly refusing to fix this widely reported issue with non-sensical explanations

What are you referring to? An option to choose your backup location got added two years ago. It works on Android 10 and above.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/ee3d7a9a3...

Please explain how do I configure Signal for people in my family so they won't lose any message, photo or group membership if their phone falls out of the pocket.

This means:

* Backup must be automatic.

* Backup must be done off device.

* Backup must be common enough that messages aren't lost.

* Restore must be available to person of average technical ability.

* Restore must not require a person to remember typing in a 20+ character pregenerated number they probably lost in last 2 years of having Setup signal.

This is the bar other messaging apps have set.

Your last item in particular renders the security benefits that Signal normally provides moot, so then why even bother with it?

It absolutely does not do that by itself. As proven by other secure implementations with more user friendly approaches to entering encyption keys.

It's also funny how demanding on use of phone numbers, shoving in crypto currency and demanding everyone to use out-of-date Electron app is somehow fine, but making backups user friendly is suddenly a massive "security" issue.

This is the BS security theater I despise at Signal. It's the software equivalent of having every single airplane passenger take off shoes.

> So I buy a mini-SD card and install it in my phone.

That's probably your answer. I don't know anyone who uses a mini-SD card. The last time I bought a phone no phone I considered had an SD slot.

It's a very First World take on it, though. Mid-to-high-end phones are usually the ones that pack a considerable amount of integrated storage but ditch the SD card slot. Budget ones are the other way around, though.