[saurik]

> To allow for recovery of message history, you have to escrow the secret somewhere.

You seem to be missing the point here: this isn't even about storing your data on someone else's computer with some kind of key escrow, this is about local backups not even working. Apple only recently implemented iMessage "sync", but before that (and still now), iMessage data was backed up to your Mac and accessible in your backup, without any concern about it being on some server or key escrow issues. Signal is simply missing the ability to get your own data out of the app on iOS. (And like, to really underscore how this is not a fundamental issue with Signal, their Android app does have a data export feature. They just don't think this is important enough to prioritize for some crazy reason.)

[AmericanChopper]

Yeah that’s true. They should allow encrypted backups to be stored in iCloud backups (they intentionally exclude this for some reason). But even then, this is a feature that will only ever be used by highly motivated individuals. The Android backups are useless if you lose your 30 digit secret. I agree their position on this is shit, but I can’t imagine it’s a barrier to mainstream adoption.

[kristofferR]

It is a massive barrier, people won't switch to secure messaging if it's unusable.

[AmericanChopper]

As a messaging service, it’s certainly not ‘unusable’. You’re claiming that the ability to permanently archive message history is an absolute minimum requirement for consumers (and that a service that does not offer this is ‘unusable’). I’m going to put a big citation needed on that.