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>...the Signal team fundamentally does not value chat history the same way a lot of people do. Keeping around old messages more or less negates the value of fo

>...the Signal team fundamentally does not value chat history the same way a lot of people do. Keeping around old messages more or less negates the value of forward secrecy. The Signal Protocol is obsessively forward secret. So it would be reasonable for those that have put so much work into getting rid of old messages for good would not value them.

godelski 6y ago
Honestly I personally just want the ability to save specific messages. My friend sends me a recipe? Save. Just shooting the shit? Don't save. I don't understand why people want to save their whole chat history but I do understand why you'd want to save specific messages, and that's a big missing feature.
- jolmg 6y ago
  s/specific messages/& and conversations/ > I don't understand why people want to save their whole chat history Valuable messages and conversations can happen too often that it's a hassle to save them manually. This is probably more common in group chats where lots of people occasionally share valuable stuff.
  - hackmiester 6y ago
    Your point and use case are valid but unrelated. I agree with the parent comment but not with your sentiment.
    - FalconSensei 6y ago
      The thing is: your use case and wants seems to be different than like, 90% of Whatsapp users, as they expect to never lose their history. So... Signal is not a replacement to Whatsapp
      - hackmiester 6y ago
        That's fine with me. I was just pointing out that those two requests are not really related. I don't know much about WhatsApp, and I've never lost any message in Signal, so I am not sure I am well equipped to discuss whether it's fit for that purpose. But I would certainly love to save individual messages in some sort of vault, as well.
      - carlhjerpe 6y ago
        Please provide source for the 90% figure.
  - godelski 6y ago
    Sure, conversations. But honestly I feel like saving everything just generates more noise and makes it difficult to find the signal.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      See my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25690699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25690699.
- richardw 6y ago
  I don’t always know which are important messages until a while later. Someone mentions a useful service or name, so I search WhatsApp to find it. Moved phones recently, iOS backup was screwed up, and I lost some great covid memes and was looking for a specific one. Had to ask the sender to resend it to me.
- amelius 6y ago
  The idea is to save all messages and have a good search option, so you'll only ever see the good posts when looking back into your history. No need to tag them beforehand.
  - godelski 6y ago
    Honestly I don't want all messages saved. I don't see that as useful. Not only is that noise but just makes me feel uncomfortable in the same way I would if someone pulled out a tape recorder while we were shooting the shit over beers. Then you think about how cultures change and people make a fuss over things from years ago on Twitter even when the person has changed opinions? No thanks. Not everything needs to be recorded. That's the premise of too many dystopian sci-fi stories.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      You can simply keep those messages in an encrypted backup. Who knows how valuable they will be in 20+ years. And maybe you will be able to apply (local) AI to them and find out interesting things about yourself.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tw04 6y ago
It's not reasonable to expect it to be a defacto messenger if you can't save chat history. Full stop. If I want a conversation to be private, I set expiring messages, for the rest of it, I want to be able to go back and reference things all the time. Whether it be digging up a song link I sent a buddy, or looking up the address someone sent me a week in advance. If they can't operate or are unwilling to operate under those guidelines then they just aren't ever going to replace whatsapp with the general populace and the community should start work on something else or agree that telegram is "good enough" (I don't think it is).
- tigerlily 6y ago
  Be a cool feature if they let us encrypt chat history in a local file.
  - nmlnn 6y ago
    Am I missing something? That's how their backups work currently
    - tw04 6y ago
      The problem is it doesn't work at all on iOS, and there's no way to sync between iOS >> Android or iOS >> PC.
  - topkeks 6y ago
    Settings -> Chats and media -> Chat backups
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
beezle 6y ago
>Keeping around old messages more or less negates the value of forward secrecy. Why? Can you please explain as my understanding of perfect forward secrecy is that should not matter. I'm not a crypto expert so perhaps I've overlooked something?
- KAMSPioneer 6y ago
  I mean, from the perspective of the crypto it doesn't matter. But it defeats the point of building a forward-secret system. Think of it like this: if I'm an attacker that breaks into the forward-secret chat app on your device, and you have kept a perfect record of every conversation you've ever had using that crypto system in _the same place you keep your identity keys_, then does it really matter whether the messaging system was "protected" by a forward-secret system? You might as well just have scrapped all that complexity and had non-forward-secure messages if you want to keep a perfect, eternal record of your conversations. I actually think the Keybase guys did a great job at this. They have non-forward-secure chats by default (so that you never lose chat history), but exploding messages (which delete themselves after a short time by design) are forward-secret, since then it actually makes a difference. I suppose it depends on your "threat model..." How do you want to use your chat system?
  - upofadown 6y ago
    The way I like to think about it: If you had a way to keep your old messages safe then you could of just used that method to protect your private key.
  - dwohnitmok 6y ago
    Chat history isn't immediately at odds with PFS. As I see it PFS first and foremost is for protecting messages in transit. This is to prevent dragnet-style surveillance. Chat history means giving up some measure of at-rest security, but it has no impact on the in transit part. Personally I also think some compromise of at-rest is a reasonable trade-off for a lot of consumer contexts because physical capture of your device already is basically game over.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Well then forward secrecy gets sacrificed for the greater good. Too bad! Make a setting for those that care. Make it the responsibility of users to make sure all their devices agree on that setting. See? problem solved.
angry_octet 6y ago
This really miscomprehends what forward secrecy means. PFS prevents an adv who obtains the keys from decoding previous messages -- even with access to your unlocked phone (and the long lived keys) they couldn't obtain cleartext on any message you had deleted, even with the ciphertext. Also, having a plaintext message does not confirm it was a particular ciphertext. But it really isn't available to the software author to know how long we want to keep a message for. If I want I can set a disappearing message timer.

godelski 6y ago

Honestly I personally just want the ability to save specific messages. My friend sends me a recipe? Save. Just shooting the shit? Don't save. I don't understand why people want to save their whole chat history but I do understand why you'd want to save specific messages, and that's a big missing feature.

jolmg 6y ago
s/specific messages/& and conversations/ > I don't understand why people want to save their whole chat history Valuable messages and conversations can happen too often that it's a hassle to save them manually. This is probably more common in group chats where lots of people occasionally share valuable stuff.
- hackmiester 6y ago
  Your point and use case are valid but unrelated. I agree with the parent comment but not with your sentiment.
  - FalconSensei 6y ago
    The thing is: your use case and wants seems to be different than like, 90% of Whatsapp users, as they expect to never lose their history. So... Signal is not a replacement to Whatsapp
    - hackmiester 6y ago
      That's fine with me. I was just pointing out that those two requests are not really related. I don't know much about WhatsApp, and I've never lost any message in Signal, so I am not sure I am well equipped to discuss whether it's fit for that purpose. But I would certainly love to save individual messages in some sort of vault, as well.
    - carlhjerpe 6y ago
      Please provide source for the 90% figure.
- godelski 6y ago
  Sure, conversations. But honestly I feel like saving everything just generates more noise and makes it difficult to find the signal.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    See my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25690699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25690699.
richardw 6y ago
I don’t always know which are important messages until a while later. Someone mentions a useful service or name, so I search WhatsApp to find it. Moved phones recently, iOS backup was screwed up, and I lost some great covid memes and was looking for a specific one. Had to ask the sender to resend it to me.
amelius 6y ago
The idea is to save all messages and have a good search option, so you'll only ever see the good posts when looking back into your history. No need to tag them beforehand.
- godelski 6y ago
  Honestly I don't want all messages saved. I don't see that as useful. Not only is that noise but just makes me feel uncomfortable in the same way I would if someone pulled out a tape recorder while we were shooting the shit over beers. Then you think about how cultures change and people make a fuss over things from years ago on Twitter even when the person has changed opinions? No thanks. Not everything needs to be recorded. That's the premise of too many dystopian sci-fi stories.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    You can simply keep those messages in an encrypted backup. Who knows how valuable they will be in 20+ years. And maybe you will be able to apply (local) AI to them and find out interesting things about yourself.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

tw04 6y ago

It's not reasonable to expect it to be a defacto messenger if you can't save chat history. Full stop. If I want a conversation to be private, I set expiring messages, for the rest of it, I want to be able to go back and reference things all the time. Whether it be digging up a song link I sent a buddy, or looking up the address someone sent me a week in advance. If they can't operate or are unwilling to operate under those guidelines then they just aren't ever going to replace whatsapp with the general populace and the community should start work on something else or agree that telegram is "good enough" (I don't think it is).

tigerlily 6y ago
Be a cool feature if they let us encrypt chat history in a local file.
- nmlnn 6y ago
  Am I missing something? That's how their backups work currently
  - tw04 6y ago
    The problem is it doesn't work at all on iOS, and there's no way to sync between iOS >> Android or iOS >> PC.
- topkeks 6y ago
  Settings -> Chats and media -> Chat backups
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

beezle 6y ago

>Keeping around old messages more or less negates the value of forward secrecy. Why? Can you please explain as my understanding of perfect forward secrecy is that should not matter. I'm not a crypto expert so perhaps I've overlooked something?

KAMSPioneer 6y ago
I mean, from the perspective of the crypto it doesn't matter. But it defeats the point of building a forward-secret system. Think of it like this: if I'm an attacker that breaks into the forward-secret chat app on your device, and you have kept a perfect record of every conversation you've ever had using that crypto system in _the same place you keep your identity keys_, then does it really matter whether the messaging system was "protected" by a forward-secret system? You might as well just have scrapped all that complexity and had non-forward-secure messages if you want to keep a perfect, eternal record of your conversations. I actually think the Keybase guys did a great job at this. They have non-forward-secure chats by default (so that you never lose chat history), but exploding messages (which delete themselves after a short time by design) are forward-secret, since then it actually makes a difference. I suppose it depends on your "threat model..." How do you want to use your chat system?
- upofadown 6y ago
  The way I like to think about it: If you had a way to keep your old messages safe then you could of just used that method to protect your private key.
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  Chat history isn't immediately at odds with PFS. As I see it PFS first and foremost is for protecting messages in transit. This is to prevent dragnet-style surveillance. Chat history means giving up some measure of at-rest security, but it has no impact on the in transit part. Personally I also think some compromise of at-rest is a reasonable trade-off for a lot of consumer contexts because physical capture of your device already is basically game over.

Ericson2314 6y ago

Well then forward secrecy gets sacrificed for the greater good. Too bad! Make a setting for those that care. Make it the responsibility of users to make sure all their devices agree on that setting. See? problem solved.

angry_octet 6y ago

This really miscomprehends what forward secrecy means. PFS prevents an adv who obtains the keys from decoding previous messages -- even with access to your unlocked phone (and the long lived keys) they couldn't obtain cleartext on any message you had deleted, even with the ciphertext. Also, having a plaintext message does not confirm it was a particular ciphertext. But it really isn't available to the software author to know how long we want to keep a message for. If I want I can set a disappearing message timer.