alt Hacker NewsMy Signal experience: ex gf in college asks what app I’m using to text. Tell her it’s Signal, E2EE, messages are only stored on her phone and nobody else can read them. She says cool and downloads the app. Four months later her phone breaks.
“Hey subjectsigma I got my new phone today. Where are all my messages?”
“… Do you have your old phone? That’s the only place they are.”
“No? Last time I got a new phone WhatsApp moved my messages over, and WA is E2EE so I thought it worked the same way.”
“Nope if you don’t have a backup or your old phone they’re gone. Sorry.”
“This is bullshit. Why does anyone use Signal. I can’t believe it deleted all my messages. I’m uninstalling it. Etc etc.”
We have a long way to go, my friend.
Replies
I don’t understand why people need old messages so badly. If they disappeared it would be fine with me. I set my iPhone messages to auto delete after a few months to save space and it works fine. A text is ephemeral, if I need to save something I use email.
It only works for WhatsApp if you have Backup to Google activated[1]. I once tried to work with backuped files from my old phone and it didn't work. (Older tutorials indicated that it once worked, though.)
[1] There was a time WhatsApp had a nag-screen if you hadn't Backup to Google activated. So I guess most people would have eventually caved.