What price privacy? End-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging app Signal has put out an interesting overview of the costs required to develop and maintain its End-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal has put out an interesting overview of the costs required to develop and maintain its pro-privacy systems.
The biggest thing for me right now is backups
I can’t comfortably recommend it to people that will lose access if they lose their phones / upgrade without following the process perfectly
Umm, doesn’t one have to backup anything one wants to save/ have access to in the future? Aren’t upgrades a thing will all software? I’m not sure how this is different for Signal versus any other messaging app. Or any app / client that produces documents, etc?
The process is a bit involved on mobile. Setting up a backup location, using a third party app to sync updates and deletions etc. It could be simplified by integrating with common cloud storage services (the encrypted file)
Also iOS doesn’t have backups at all last I checked. If you lose your phone the messages are toast
I just checked the Signal Support (https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Backup-and-Restore-Messages). And it appears there is a method generally, but not for iOS. Tho’ screenshots work. And I understand how not backing up, and disappearing messages contribute to security.
Well sure, but encrypted backups are still secure. What’s not secure (or private rather) is someone realizing they can’t have a backup of important chats and going back to Facebook Messenger.
Backups are a thing on Android, and they’re planned for iOS. It just hasn’t happened yet. People can choose what they want to backup and when they want disappearing messages turned on.