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Signal will finally let you transfer your encrypted chat history to new linked devices (mas.to)

submitted 2 days ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

107 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Signal has announced new functionality in its upcoming beta releases, allowing users to transfer messages and media when linking their primary Signal device to a new desktop or iPad. This feature offers the choice to carry over chats and the last 45 days of media, or to start fresh with only new messages.

The transfer process is end-to-end encrypted, ensuring privacy. It involves creating a compressed, encrypted archive of your Signal data, which is then sent to the new device via Signal's servers. Despite handling the transfer, the servers cannot access the message content due to the encryption.

With the introduction of a cross-platform archive format, Signal is also exploring additional tools for message transfer to new devices or restoration in case of device loss or damage. Users can begin testing this feature soon, with a wider rollout expected in the coming weeks.

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[–] bisby@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

XMPP has been an option for decades, if your contacts aren't using it by now, they arent going to. And with communications tools, both parties have to agree on a tool. Even if one party doesn't care about privacy or security.

Raw brute force security isn't the point most of the time, and ease of use and simplicity of setup are going to be major factors in adoption. Signal is much easier to get started with for most people than XMPP.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah. If the contact would be installing a whole new client to communicate with you anyway, why not make it an XMPP one? I got my mom to use it like this.

I did hear that the implementation of the encryption isn't as good as in Signal (and most clients also use an older version of it), but from my understanding - not in any way critically so.

[–] Supernova1051@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

XMPP only does message encryption. Signal has spent tons of engineering time and effort to minimize the collection of metadata, not just encryption of message content.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 1 points 1 day ago

Yeah, true! However, you also have to trust their server not to log what is available to them (including your whole social graph), while with XMPP you can SSH into your server and see that its retention is exactly as you expected. But yeah, the issue remains when interacting with other servers - tho even then there the data is more evenly distributed between different servers with different owners.