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.
Finally I can transfer my one and only chat to my PC
Thanks, I love Signal, but can we get Android tablet linking?
Molly has it.
What’s Molly in this context?
A good time 🌚
That’s why “in this context”!
Still a good time in that context 🤭
A hardened Signal fork that works with Signal’s servers and adds features I like that Signal doesn’t support.
I heard signal dislikes forks using its server, did molly get approval to do so, or is this based on generosity until signal can ban them?
I heard that too…1ish years ago and Molly still seems to work okay. I would assume by now that Signal knows they exist, so hopefully they’ll keep playing nice.
TIL. Thank you!
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 on Android. If you have an iPhone you can link using the molly signal fork on an android device and then backup using that.
Oooh interesting! Could you please elaborate / share any resources about this?
Here’s a link to their website https://molly.im/ It also links to their GitHub. If you’d want to backup what you’d do is link molly to your iphone signal instance and then the Android client or molly android client of signal allows you to make local backups on device.
Restoring it back to the iPhone won’t be possible but there’s a backup at least. Or rather maybe with that recent change the article talks about it might be possible in the future but not currently afaik.
This is wonderful, thank you so much!
I’ve been holding off from switching to Android (and getting a GrapheneOS x Pixel phone) because I have 5 years’ worth of messages on Signal on my iPhone… I’ll look into this method for sure
I just set up molly today, along with mollysocket and an ntfy server. Liking it so far, just need to get my friends to migrate…
I still wait for an option to officially use signal without having to have a proprietary operating system running 😆🥲
And I am waiting for a way to use Signal without it ever touching a smartphone) Right now I have a Graphene phone so I can trust it (so Molly works), but before that my phone (like most phones) did not support any degoogled OS. While the laptop (like most laptops can) was running Linux easily. Yet, you have to either use an Android VM or a frustrating command-line client to register!
Yea, that was what I meant to say with my comment 😄 linux phone gang rise up!
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.
Convenience mostly, privacy needs to be convenient and easy for people, otherwise no one uses the tools.
This absolutely expands the threat surface in a few different ways though. It’s relatively low stakes, but it’s non zero. I have not dug into the implementation but I am curious how this doesn’t technically violate forward secrecy. A single session key will ostensibly be used to encrypt the entire session key database? Which means if that key is compromised in transit then the entire key history is compromised. Using the long term secret directly for data in transit is definitely not compliant either.
Should be, but sometimes it just isn’t. I’ve definitely had plenty of times where I was like, oh shit, the only place I have that information is in this chat somewhere.
Other people, kind of like me, are just data hoarders. Just because I can’t think of a use of the data now, doesn’t mean I won’t be able to think of one in the future! I have piles of old inboxes in my archives.
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.This the kinda guy who uses terminal history to go back 4 years instead of searching for the command on the arch wiki
I feel personally attacked.
People have different opinions about things. Why do you think it’s good to lose chat history?
No records means an adversary can’t pull off an entire lifetime of communication history if a device is compromised. Signal is not the medium in which I’m interested in keeping records.
I see. I just don’t have adversaries, and if they got hold of the memes and inane conversations I have about whose turn it is to pick up the kid from school then good luck to them.
Ehhh, that’s an easy thought.
But what about when your memes point to you being in a group that is now illegal, or oppressed? What if something you said a year ago is now being looked for as a sign of possible opposition?
It’s nice to think “I have nothing to hide”, and for the most part, most people don’t.
But that conversation about who’s picking the kids up from school is enough to help pin down where you’ll be at a given time, when you’ll be apart from your family, it gives an insight into family dynamics, it gives hints as to your personality, and your partner’s.
You stack that with exchanges about groceries, errands, etc, and now anyone who can get access to your measures messages can predict a lot more about you
Since fascism in particular is coming back with a vengeance, your can’t even predict what you’ll be targeted for.
Now, take all of that info, combine it with location data that’s even easier for a government to get, and you’re fucked.
Don’t forget that a woman was arrested because she helped her daughter obtain abortion pills. They got the info via Facebook, but with the messages being gone would have prevented that, or made it much harder.
This is the world we live in now. None of us are safe, none of us can rely on the rule of law. It’s rolling the dice as to what can be used against you.
If you don’t have adversaries then why not use SMS? Though this just ends up with the tired old “if you have nothing to hide” argument that I’m not really interested in repeating.
Those examples also don’t sound like things you’ll need to look up months or years down the line, either. So why not just let them fade away?
The “nothing to hide” thing is a bad argument, IMO. I’ve got nothing to hide, but I lock the bathroom door when I go in there.
Sometimes it’s been useful to go back through a chat history and find something someone said in the past. A group I’m in regularly rings up old references from a year before. I like it.
I’m a bit of a digital hoarder though. I keep blurry photos from years ago, no clue why.
Same topics here, which is exactly why I have no use for archiving chats.
I use disappearing messages no longer than a week for all my Signal chats. Pretty surprised everyone’s out here keeping long records over this medium.
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.
Yeah. For me, Signal’s security benefits are counteracted by various other usability issues. Such as not being feature-complete on desktop and not even allowing registration there without workarounds - given that phones are very privacy-invasive by default and far from all can have a privacy-respecting OS installed (while Linux works on pretty much any random computer). Or even on mobile - pushing the user towards Google download with dark patterns, not being on F-Droid, or (at least in my experience) the official app not working at all on my Graphene device (Molly worked perfectly though). Also, from what I’ve seen, even if you don’t mind losing connectivity with other users and would only converse with people on your server anyway (like how I do with my family on XMPP), selfhosting Signal is really hard compared to XMPP, Simplex or even Matrix, even requiring modifying the client app.
So is there a signal alternative that is fully open source and not under control of one single company?
Bett as I understand it, it’s still from a company and still locked to the whims of a CEO and I’m done with that.
What’s the best alternative?
Do they allow you to use it without a phone number yet?
You need a phone number to register but then you can create a username and choose to hide your number
