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Sigh. What about fixing backups so that I don't need this? There is always something absolutely odd with Signal. The obtuse insistence in creating it's own vau

Sigh. What about fixing backups so that I don't need this? There is always something absolutely odd with Signal. The obtuse insistence in creating it's own vault makes it annoying to use to share media and to make backups. Down to the built-in unusable camera app. I have almost everything duplicated in/out of signal because of this. Huge space waste. What's the threat model? Under the assumption that I can root the phone this is pointless. But if I trust the sandbox it's also pointless. Anonymizing file metadata in/out would have been more pragmatic, but pragmatism here is frowned upon. Remote contact discovery: technically impressive. I would have gladly opted out though to remain anonymous to some contacts that have my number. Yeah, that's the real "privacy" bit which is worth 10 times this PIN debacle. I'm still bound to use a phone number which I _don't_ really care about even just to use the desktop version (ahaha, desktop, yeah.. cough). When I saw the PIN prompt for the first time I realized the money injection was giving its first fruits. I gave matrix a first good try. Finally I can choose from a plethora of clients, run my own server if needed. The setup though is still not dumb-proof as signal (which is why I tolerated all the issues with signal so far), and the phone clients I've tried are not as polished. That being said, when I mentioned PINs I managed to convert most my tech contacts to matrix within a week. The real question is whether the other ones will stay, jump over, or just go back to whatsapp (which they never removed).

izacus 6y ago
I just had to restore backups on my phone (previous got broken) and it's such a disaster of usability that it makes use of GPG easy. 1.) You only get to see the backup password ONCE. They create it for you, it's a giant bunch of numbers written in columns. They show you that the FIRST time you enable backups, which might be years away from the time you need them. 2.) After they dump the backup, they just throw it in a preset folder on Android flash. You need to find a way to get it off the device yourself (good luck if the device broke). No help with transferring to another device, no Android beam support, nothing. 3.) After you somehow manage to get the file to another device, there's no help at restoring it either. You need to put it EXACTLY in the right directory. They don't tell you which. Even after that, the app will not pick up the backup. There's no "Restore backup" button or option. You need to KNOW that you have to destroy all existing app settings by clearing data and then it'll attempt a restore. 4.) When it attempts to restore, it presents you an input field that's flat text entry and is NOT organized in original columns. You need to guess the order of columns in which you need to enter the 30+ digits. If you fail... well, try again! 5.) If you switch from iOS to Android then you're SOL because iOS people don't deserve to have their conversations preserved. It feels like the authors of the app never had any meaningful conversations they'd like to remember in the future. It feels like the same mindset which made some security people implement nonsensical policies like "you need to change to a new 16 char password every week without duplication for a year" on Active Directory. A mind set which thinks that badgering you for PIN every week accomplishes anything but a wish to install WhatsApp. A mindset, which does significantly more harm to security than good. A mindset, which bogged proliferation of encrypted communication for years until corporations took it away. And that's sad.
- vinay427 6y ago
  > You only get to see the backup password ONCE. They create it for you, it's a giant bunch of numbers written in columns. They show you that the FIRST time you enable backups, which might be years away from the time you need them. You can create a new backup if you forget or lose the encryption key, and considering it creates them periodically this doesn't even serve as an extra inconvenience for me. I don't see an obviously better alternative for creating an encrypted backup. Why would a password repeatedly be shown to a user?
  - izacus 6y ago
    How do you recreate the key on a broken phone? Also, the dialog showing the code doesn't allow copying or provide any easy way of saving it somewhere. Which makes is very unlikely that many users will successfuly store it. Also the backup itself has no support of syncing anywhere. Your phone fell out of your pocket? Well, say goodbye of all the pictures of your nephew. Pretty much every layer of this process is very user-hostile and provides practically no help for the user to have effective and secure backups.
    - vinay427 6y ago
      > How do you recreate the key on a broken phone? What you're looking for appears to be an unencrypted backup, which has clear security implications that Signal (quite reasonably, in my opinion) chose to avoid given that it is storing a file on your local device memory. Honestly, if you don't want to keep track of an encryption key and still want to retain your message history, maybe you don't care that much about your messaging privacy (which is fine). There are plenty of apps that serve this use case. > Also, the dialog showing the code doesn't allow copying or provide any easy way of saving it somewhere. Which makes is very unlikely that many users will successfuly store it. Again, I think this is a conscious choice. Their design decisions appear to work well for those who don't know much about technology but still want a private messaging platform. Allowing unsafe key storage methods instead of (for example) writing it down on a piece of paper might encourage users to take that easier route and Signal wants to lean towards privacy even if that means losing message history. > Also the backup itself has no support of syncing anywhere. Your phone fell out of your pocket? Well, say goodbye of all the pictures of your nephew. I agree that this can make things complicated, but based on the comments here a good number of users don't want a cloud storage solution and would prefer to lose their messages. In any case, this is easy to work around because a Android allows for decent file management, so any one of the hundreds of file sync apps can work for you here.

izacus 6y ago

I just had to restore backups on my phone (previous got broken) and it's such a disaster of usability that it makes use of GPG easy. 1.) You only get to see the backup password ONCE. They create it for you, it's a giant bunch of numbers written in columns. They show you that the FIRST time you enable backups, which might be years away from the time you need them. 2.) After they dump the backup, they just throw it in a preset folder on Android flash. You need to find a way to get it off the device yourself (good luck if the device broke). No help with transferring to another device, no Android beam support, nothing. 3.) After you somehow manage to get the file to another device, there's no help at restoring it either. You need to put it EXACTLY in the right directory. They don't tell you which. Even after that, the app will not pick up the backup. There's no "Restore backup" button or option. You need to KNOW that you have to destroy all existing app settings by clearing data and then it'll attempt a restore. 4.) When it attempts to restore, it presents you an input field that's flat text entry and is NOT organized in original columns. You need to guess the order of columns in which you need to enter the 30+ digits. If you fail... well, try again! 5.) If you switch from iOS to Android then you're SOL because iOS people don't deserve to have their conversations preserved. It feels like the authors of the app never had any meaningful conversations they'd like to remember in the future. It feels like the same mindset which made some security people implement nonsensical policies like "you need to change to a new 16 char password every week without duplication for a year" on Active Directory. A mind set which thinks that badgering you for PIN every week accomplishes anything but a wish to install WhatsApp. A mindset, which does significantly more harm to security than good. A mindset, which bogged proliferation of encrypted communication for years until corporations took it away. And that's sad.

vinay427 6y ago
> You only get to see the backup password ONCE. They create it for you, it's a giant bunch of numbers written in columns. They show you that the FIRST time you enable backups, which might be years away from the time you need them. You can create a new backup if you forget or lose the encryption key, and considering it creates them periodically this doesn't even serve as an extra inconvenience for me. I don't see an obviously better alternative for creating an encrypted backup. Why would a password repeatedly be shown to a user?
- izacus 6y ago
  How do you recreate the key on a broken phone? Also, the dialog showing the code doesn't allow copying or provide any easy way of saving it somewhere. Which makes is very unlikely that many users will successfuly store it. Also the backup itself has no support of syncing anywhere. Your phone fell out of your pocket? Well, say goodbye of all the pictures of your nephew. Pretty much every layer of this process is very user-hostile and provides practically no help for the user to have effective and secure backups.
  - vinay427 6y ago
    > How do you recreate the key on a broken phone? What you're looking for appears to be an unencrypted backup, which has clear security implications that Signal (quite reasonably, in my opinion) chose to avoid given that it is storing a file on your local device memory. Honestly, if you don't want to keep track of an encryption key and still want to retain your message history, maybe you don't care that much about your messaging privacy (which is fine). There are plenty of apps that serve this use case. > Also, the dialog showing the code doesn't allow copying or provide any easy way of saving it somewhere. Which makes is very unlikely that many users will successfuly store it. Again, I think this is a conscious choice. Their design decisions appear to work well for those who don't know much about technology but still want a private messaging platform. Allowing unsafe key storage methods instead of (for example) writing it down on a piece of paper might encourage users to take that easier route and Signal wants to lean towards privacy even if that means losing message history. > Also the backup itself has no support of syncing anywhere. Your phone fell out of your pocket? Well, say goodbye of all the pictures of your nephew. I agree that this can make things complicated, but based on the comments here a good number of users don't want a cloud storage solution and would prefer to lose their messages. In any case, this is easy to work around because a Android allows for decent file management, so any one of the hundreds of file sync apps can work for you here.