Signal will finally let you transfer your encrypted chat history to new linked devices

[treadful@lemmy.zip]

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?

[southsamurai@sh.itjust.works]

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.

[homesweethomemrl@lemmy.world]

Yay Signal!

[jackgreenearth@lemm.ee]

I thought it was open source? Presumably a FOSS project can't go too bad.

[takumidesh@lemmy.world]

Being able to back up and then encrypt the messages on cold storage for when I may need to go back through an old conversation doesn't negate something like disappearing messages.

It's the best of both worlds, messages go away over time so if you lose your phone / it's compromised, you don't give up the goose, but you also have a nice safe stored version in the off chance you need it.

The danger imo isn't in having the messages at all, it's more about how, when they are just on your phone or whatever, they are generally not locked down.

[geometrinen_gepardi@sopuli.xyz]

I find the idea of reminiscing over instant messages funny. Different strokes I guess.

[engineergaming@feddit.nl]

Yeah, it absolutely is. But just being FOSS does not guarantee that its development would be forked in a sufficient way should something bad happen. Especially since they use Haskell, and I heard that it is not very common thus decreasing the survival chances. Sure hope it is cool enough to still warrant a fork, though.

[sexualpolytope@lemmy.sdf.org]

You can already do it. I have Signal create daily backups, sync it to my NAS using Syncthing with versioning enabled.

[essteeyou@lemmy.world]

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.

[elena@lemmy.world]

Oooh interesting! Could you please elaborate / share any resources about this?

[steal_your_face@lemmy.ml]

Do they allow you to use it without a phone number yet?

[croaker@lemmy.zip]

Yes. For quite a while now.

[wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world]

This the kinda guy who uses terminal history to go back 4 years instead of searching for the command on the arch wiki

[derin@lemmy.beru.co]

Blogs like these drive me fucking crazy: there's a primary source out there, why not just link to that at the end of your (evidently pointless) opinion piece?

It's almost like they know their commentary isn't adding anything and they're worried we'll click away immediately.

[lucidnightmare@lemm.ee]

Not when I created one a week or two ago. Still requested a phone number before moving to the next step.

Might be dependent on location?

[johnworks@sh.itjust.works]

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.

[socsa@piefed.social]

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.

[steal_your_face@lemmy.ml]

Yeah looks like you still need a number to sign up for an account

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/6829998083994-Phone-Number-Privacy-and-Usernames-Deeper-Dive

[lemmebe@sh.itjust.works]

No looking back.

On my side, messengers are used for daily communication, info, memes and such.

Memories are made in person or via video calls having coffee, drinking. My family and friends are scattered all over so we often drink via Signal, sync the music we listen to on both sides... All night long. 🪗

Interested about video calls - do you record them as well for looking back?

[lemmebe@sh.itjust.works]

Same topics here, which is exactly why I have no use for archiving chats.