Hacker News Reader

Comment by shric | Hacker News Reader

Strange, I've been using Signal for years and its backup feature works just fine:

1. Enable backups. 2. Point it at a folder on your phone which gets synchronized somewhere 3. Note the 30 digit passphrase in your password manager.

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...

Have had no issue restoring to replacement phones.

View on HN

That may be true for Android devices but not for Mac and iphone. I checked a week ago when i wanted to give signal another chance after years but it's utter lack of a convenient backup and restore functionality drove me once again away. This means if you loose or damage your phone or macbook all chat history is forever lost. That may be convenient if you're the ceo of amazon but not for normal people.

The worst thing for me was that app versions expire pretty frequently with no warning, then you just stop getting notifications. Which is extra annoying cause I'm only on it for some bar trivia group that totally doesn't need e2ee (or even e).

Also, Facebook Messenger recently added e2ee, which made it glitchier, fussier, and not really any more secure given that the key is a short numeric code.

Yep this is a huge issue on iOS.

Here’s a couple of solutions, Signal:

1. Generate a long paper key that can be stored in a password manager. Use iCloud to store an encrypted backup.

2. iCloud now has optional e2ee. Let me just say my threat model trusts that e2ee and use iCloud directly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com