Signal announces a backup feature that includes 100MB of storage for texts and the last 45 days' worth of media for free, or 100GB of storage for $1.99/month
Introducing Signal Secure Backups
cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37112962
This right here is a feature that need not be limited to official servers. Signal is centralized, a kind reminder.
I thought they let you bring your own storage for free? I heard they did at least
I mean, I just use the scheduled backups and back it up to a locally hosted server. Though the scheduled backups just go to a folder on my phone
Been donating for a few months now, hoping they won't cave to chat control pressure.
Its so annoying, I hate this "if you have nothing to hide..." mentality. The law sucks and is not fit for purpose, if it was its benefits would still not outweigh the costs.
Anyone in that horrible space is operating at a different level, anyone who is not should be caught by standard policing and parenting.
There is a brilliant podcast, hard listen but fantastic doc, called hunting warhead and it shows that this stuff is not happening on the open web. Your everyday scumbag is probably on tiktok or roblox where the victims might be.
AGPL iirc. it can be forked and run independently or modified into a decentralized federation model. So doesn't really matter if they cave.
I'm already daily-syncing to my own homelab, but this is nice. They eventually had to have a way to make money.
Can you say how? If you could just name drop whatever services you're using, that would be appreciated
E: I'm stupid. Forgot there are file backups, I already have that set up.
I use my self hosted matrix server and the signal bridge, that way I don't have to do file backups. I found this to be more reliable and I also have the whatsapp bridge on there for people that I could not convince yet to use signal or matrix. Then I do daily dumps of the matrix postgres db and sync them to my backup space (encrypted of course)
How do you do that?
All I want is anonymous sign-up.
I thought they already did this? Wasn't that their justification for killing integrated SMS?
As far as I know they added usernames which you use to identify people. But to sign up you still need a phone number to verify through a code they send you.
Anyone able to get Signal backup to work with a Proton Drive folder on Android? Technically speaking that'd achieve the same result
Not automated, but I have a regular signal backup to a local folder that occurs nightly. I manually push a copy up to proton drive once a month or so. 🤷♂️
I'm using FolderSync to backup to a free Mega.nz account. Been good for years
If Proton supports WebDAV: Theres Davx5. Also Theres for sure lots of foss smb and FTP mounting apps
Are people not copying their backup off their device periodically?
Personally I'd find it useful to create backups by year so the process doesn't take twenty minutes and wouldn't create a massive backup file.
A couple years ago I had to make an effort of sending gallery links instead of sharing images and video directly through Signal since my backup file had grown so large. It's a bit arduous.
Are people not copying their backup off their device periodically?
Do you change your air filter, clean your keyboard, floss your teeth, derust your tools, organize your files, respond to all your messages, keep on top of available tax breaks and deals, dust under your bed etc?
No one does every random maintenance task as often as they should meaning that everyone is letting some slip occasionally which means you should expect that no, not everyone is periodically backing up and transferring their DMs to a different device.
I'm keeping this because I really do feel like "techie" people forget that tech shit shit like back ups are a chore that 99% of people would rather not deal with.
Does having an app on the desktop PC do this for you basically? If I lost my phone today but signal was still installed on my PC. Wouldn't that be a backup?
Well my point was not that every random maintenance task under the sun gets done and ticked off a mile long list.
It seems a reasonable guess that a person whose hobby is building custom mechanical keyboards probably does keep it clean. I figured people using an encrypted messaging system with backups enabled would probably go to the trouble of ensuring those backups didn't live in one place.
From your comment and a few others, it's evident I was wrong in this thought. Among other things, it seems some people don't want backups at all, which is a bit surprising to me. That's why I asked the question.
It is weirder to me that people back shit like this up. I have zero desire to keep a backup of chat and random images people have sent me.
I've never backed up messages, when I do a fresh install on my phone I just go with what comes in from then on, all my chats are set to auto delete after two weeks
I thought the whole point of Signal was so the messages could disappear?
That's a misunderstanding on your part.
I'd mostly be interested for E2E encryption.
The thing with signal on iOS is simply that there currently is no way to back up your messages.
And I'm kind of going to be a bit pissed if the only way to back up my messages will be to use signal's servers after this feature is released.
I don't think signal data is included in system backups unless your device is rooted. You'd have to go into signal and back it up explicitly.
I just turned this feature on. I don't backup my device all, I just expect everything to be in my cloud.
I just mention some scary keywords in my search queries and let the government host my backups for me. It's convenient, automatic, and (due to new vibe-coded evidence storage systems) readily accessible from anywhere.
WKUK: It's Illegal To Say
Kinda wonder what the actual cutoff is regarding the legality of those statements. Like "I want to-" and "I wish someone would-" don't really carry any actual threat. As opposed to something like "I'm going to-" which, yeah, straight to jail.