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This BS is why I completely stopped donating to the signal foundation. The messages are mine, not theirs, and yet they refuse to allow me to handle them how I

This BS is why I completely stopped donating to the signal foundation. The messages are mine, not theirs, and yet they refuse to allow me to handle them how I deem fit.

teiferer 1y ago
Have you read the article? They are working on it.
- rPlayer6554 1y ago
  Where does it say that?
  - layer8 1y ago
    “Our future plans include letting you save a secure backup archive to the location of your choosing”.
  - sambostock 1y ago
    > Our future plans include letting you save a secure backup archive to the location of your choosing, [...] I also missed this on my first skim of the article though.
- vigilans 1y ago
  Thank you. I should have read to the end, and I'm glad they're planning to support backups stored on their users' media.
- kelnos 1y ago
  Their first cut at "working on it" is to require that we pay Signal to store our backups for us (45 days of media and 100MiB total is not a useful free tier; I have more than 1 GiB of messages/media spanning years), when that's an entirely unnecessary restriction.
  - teiferer 1y ago
    I don't know what you do for a living but it's very common when writing and releasing software to do it in phases. Earlier phases have a restricted feature set and feedback from the field/customers/users experiencing earlier phases informs choices in later phases. Unless you have direct insights into their dev process, your claim that the restriction be "entitely unnecessary" seems overly strong.
palata 1y ago
> The messages are mine, not theirs, and yet they refuse to allow me to handle them how I deem fit. "They refuse to allow me" meaning "they don't add the features I want for free to the app they provide for free, so I complain". The messages are yours, of course. But don't forget that you use their work for free. If you're not happy, go use the free work of someone else, I guess?
- Y-bar 1y ago
  They are somewhat correct though, Signal has written code explicitly to prevent iOS users from including Signal data in Apple’s encrypted local and/or cloud backups. Allowing encrypted backups was free for Signal, but they spent time and money to prevent it for iOS users. Part of the code the wrote to prevent backups in question: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/blob/5590f09c3643f12cb1b774821051e965bb34e99b/SignalServiceKit/Util/OWSFileSystem.swift#L115-L138 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/blob/5590f09c3643f12...
  - palata 1y ago
    It would be interesting to have Signal's justification for that, but I can totally imagine that it is a security feature. As in: they may not want their users to inadvertently share their Signal messages with Apple.
    - Y-bar 1y ago
      Lot's of people have requested justification in related Github issues there, but Signal has not given a clear answer. If there was a security problem with the encryption process I believe a CVE or similar would have been in order because it would affect millions of users.
      - palata 1y ago
        I was not talking about a security flaw. I was saying that maybe, Signal did not want to push their users to trust the Apple backup by default. Signal is a nonprofit foundation, it's not like they are trying to squeeze their users with their own secure backup.

This BS is why I completely stopped donating to the signal foundation. The messages are mine, not theirs, and yet they refuse to allow me to handle them how I deem fit.

teiferer 1y ago

Have you read the article? They are working on it.

rPlayer6554 1y ago
Where does it say that?
- layer8 1y ago
  “Our future plans include letting you save a secure backup archive to the location of your choosing”.
- sambostock 1y ago
  > Our future plans include letting you save a secure backup archive to the location of your choosing, [...] I also missed this on my first skim of the article though.
vigilans 1y ago
Thank you. I should have read to the end, and I'm glad they're planning to support backups stored on their users' media.
kelnos 1y ago
Their first cut at "working on it" is to require that we pay Signal to store our backups for us (45 days of media and 100MiB total is not a useful free tier; I have more than 1 GiB of messages/media spanning years), when that's an entirely unnecessary restriction.
- teiferer 1y ago
  I don't know what you do for a living but it's very common when writing and releasing software to do it in phases. Earlier phases have a restricted feature set and feedback from the field/customers/users experiencing earlier phases informs choices in later phases. Unless you have direct insights into their dev process, your claim that the restriction be "entitely unnecessary" seems overly strong.

palata 1y ago

> The messages are mine, not theirs, and yet they refuse to allow me to handle them how I deem fit. "They refuse to allow me" meaning "they don't add the features I want for free to the app they provide for free, so I complain". The messages are yours, of course. But don't forget that you use their work for free. If you're not happy, go use the free work of someone else, I guess?

Y-bar 1y ago
They are somewhat correct though, Signal has written code explicitly to prevent iOS users from including Signal data in Apple’s encrypted local and/or cloud backups. Allowing encrypted backups was free for Signal, but they spent time and money to prevent it for iOS users. Part of the code the wrote to prevent backups in question: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/blob/5590f09c3643f12cb1b774821051e965bb34e99b/SignalServiceKit/Util/OWSFileSystem.swift#L115-L138 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/blob/5590f09c3643f12...
- palata 1y ago
  It would be interesting to have Signal's justification for that, but I can totally imagine that it is a security feature. As in: they may not want their users to inadvertently share their Signal messages with Apple.
  - Y-bar 1y ago
    Lot's of people have requested justification in related Github issues there, but Signal has not given a clear answer. If there was a security problem with the encryption process I believe a CVE or similar would have been in order because it would affect millions of users.
    - palata 1y ago
      I was not talking about a security flaw. I was saying that maybe, Signal did not want to push their users to trust the Apple backup by default. Signal is a nonprofit foundation, it's not like they are trying to squeeze their users with their own secure backup.