[gustavmarwin]

I'm very hopeful this reverse engineering effort will enable the creation of a tool to export my conversations (WhatsApp can do email export, which let's be real, doesn't cut it for most cases).

A point to those that support migrating to alternatives such as Signal. Signal is good, but far from great for a single reason: you need a phone number. This is very bad in necsec and reliability terms, my case:

Reliability: like more and more people, I travel all the time between countries and live out of Airbnbs. Hence my pre-paid phone numbers changes very regularly. If I lose my phone, I lose the phone number, I also lose my Whatsapp/Signal key associated with my phone number.

Netsec: A phone number is associated with your physical identity, you might not care, but more and more people do care about this stuff. Yes there are ways around that, but nothing straightforward and actually practical.

I'm patiently, but eagerly, looking forward to status.im .

[niklasrde]

This may sound like an advert, but it's not - I used "Backuptrans Android WhatsApp to iPhone Transfer for Mac" last year when I moved from Android to iPhone, and surprisingly it actually worked!

I could export all my Android (Nougat) messages and media, and restore it onto my iPhone (iOS 11).

It was a bit dodgy though - it asked me to install an old (custom?) APK first to export my messages, and the iPhone restore process looked like an actual iOS system restore..

[stordoff]

I wonder if it's easier to manipulate a backup than to inject data into an app actually on the phone -- make a backup, replace the app's data, then restore the backup. You (presumably) have root on the Mac, so finding any needed encryption keys is probably easier, and adding data to an app on the phone doesn't sound easy unless the app/phone provides an interface for it.

[madeofpalk]

> and the iPhone restore process looked like an actual iOS system restore..

As in it 'hijacked' the UI? I guess its possible that it's using the backup-restore mechanism to get data onto the iPhone.

I wonder if it still works now in iOS 11.

[nothrabannosir]

which platform? On iOS “export chat” exports a .zip file which you can send to any app that accepts it, or to a comp using airdrop. Works pretty well for exporting all photos and videos from a chat.

[naasking]

Sounds like you could get a stable VoIP number and just use that. One time cost and has its uses for cheap long distance calling.

[Tijdreiziger]

Most people expect you to have 1 mobile phone number, not separate ones for calling and messaging.

[naasking]

I don't see the problem. Once you've registered with your messaging service, like WhatsApp, you're sending messages to people not numbers.

[Tijdreiziger]

Then if someone wants to call you, they won't be sure which number to use.

[woolvalley]

Why not use wire then?

iMessage works with email addresses too.

[leetbulb]

I second wire. Love it.

[akkat]

If you want a good alternative try xmpp. It is basically email but for chat. Completely free, open source, distributed. And, you can have as many as you want with no need for a phone number.

[dingo_bat]

Just use telegram. Open source, native clients for every platform. No phone number necessary.

[tomcooks]

Open source client, as far as i know the server is still closed source.

I suggest using Riot, preferrably self-hosted.

[mgliwka]

Not even that. They only dump the source code over the fence once in a while. Try to find the source code for the latest release of any one of the Telegram mobile clients. Good luck!

[fmntf]

"No phone number necessary" is only true if Google Voice is available in your country. A phone number is necessary to create a Telegram account.

[mcny]

> "No phone number necessary" is only true if Google Voice is available in your country. A phone number is necessary to create a Telegram account.

To add to that I can use Signal just fine with Google Voice. So if both Telegram and Signal require a Google voice number, might as well go with Signal.

[kome]

I would like to use Signal, but I am forced to use Telegram for the same reason. (I have also to say that Telegram mac client is pretty awesome).

It makes no sense to create a "secure" chat app, and then to force your users to use cellphones, which is the most unsafe technology I can imagine... Why this cellphone fetish?

[spullara]

Cellphones are far more safe than your computer - especially iPhones. All apps are run in a sandboxed environment and are vetted before being released. Further, the secure enclave is far better at protecting secrets than anything on a typical laptop/desktop machine.

[pmlnr]

Nonsense. Some adroid virus, like Triada, is a nightmare compared to nearly anything even on Windows.

[kome]

but:

- you are tracked everywhere - you don't control the software for real - you have almost no control on connectivity - it's super difficult to kill a process

etc.

[mykull]

no, this is wrong. secure enclave or not. radio chips have direct memory access. phones are only as secure as providers want them to be. Computers actually do what I tell them to --I don't need hacks to "root" them or inspect their behavior.

[alerighi]

iPhones are secure, maybe they contain backdoors from Apple and we don't know, but Android are not secure at all, especially because most Android vendors usually don't update the OS to the latest security patches, so the majority of the Android phones out there are full of unpatched security vulnerabilities.

Also there are not good free software mobile operating systems, sure there is LineageOS and other ROMs that still require some proprietary parts, mainly the firmware of the device and binary blobs in the kernel, for one person concerned about privacy that is a problem, because proprietary software means backdoors, and it's useless to use a fantastic free software secure communication app if we can't trust the OS where we run it.

[brokenmachine]

You're talking about Android not being secure because it uses proprietary blobs, but saying that iphones are secure because both the hardware and software is proprietary?

Apple's reality distortion field in full effect...

Neither Android nor iPhone can be considered secure.

[l2dy]

> No phone number necessary.

How did you sign in without a phone number? It's not possible on https://web.telegram.org/#/login.