[palata]

> The messages are mine, not theirs, and yet they refuse to allow me to handle them how I deem fit.

"They refuse to allow me" meaning "they don't add the features I want for free to the app they provide for free, so I complain".

The messages are yours, of course. But don't forget that you use their work for free. If you're not happy, go use the free work of someone else, I guess?

[Y-bar]

They are somewhat correct though, Signal has written code explicitly to prevent iOS users from including Signal data in Apple’s encrypted local and/or cloud backups.

Allowing encrypted backups was free for Signal, but they spent time and money to prevent it for iOS users.

Part of the code the wrote to prevent backups in question:

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/blob/5590f09c3643f12...

[palata]

It would be interesting to have Signal's justification for that, but I can totally imagine that it is a security feature.

As in: they may not want their users to inadvertently share their Signal messages with Apple.

[Y-bar]

Lot's of people have requested justification in related Github issues there, but Signal has not given a clear answer. If there was a security problem with the encryption process I believe a CVE or similar would have been in order because it would affect millions of users.

[palata]

I was not talking about a security flaw.

I was saying that maybe, Signal did not want to push their users to trust the Apple backup by default.

Signal is a nonprofit foundation, it's not like they are trying to squeeze their users with their own secure backup.

[Y-bar]

We are unfortunately rehashing the same arguments from Github, nothing prevents Signal from distrusting Apple by default.

But there is also nothing (except for some secret reason they refuse to elaborate) that prevents them from allowing users to actively chose to trust Apple. Except for their own internal reasons, that is.

It's the user's data after all. The user should be able to control and access it. Sensible defaults makes sense, but the outright refusal to explain why they prevent it is very odd. I have a decent "IT hygiene", I keep my operating system updated with patches, I don't download pirated/cracked software, I have hardware-enabled encryption on my storage devices, I have a good password for my local account, I encrypt my local iPhone backups.

Why should I not be allowed to include my Signal chats in those local backups? Signal has never answered that question, which is very strange.

[palata]

> Why should I not be allowed to

Same as I said above: you are asking for a new feature. Their default is those 20 lines that "protect" the files. If they want to offer you a way to still enable it, someone has to do it. Someone has to work on the UX of it, maybe there is a need to explain to the users why it is less secure when this feature is enabled, and then there is work to do with the criticisms that will come next time someone shoots themselves in the foot because of this feature (because "Signal shouldn't have allowed that in the first place").

I know, you will say "it's not much". But everybody asks for their "small feature", and projects generally can't do everything that everybody asks them to do (and usually for free).

I find it totally valid if they choose that they won't offer features to lower their security, and instead they will work on features having sufficiently good security. Which in this case is the secure backup.

[AnonC]

> I was saying that maybe, Signal did not want to push their users to trust the Apple backup by default.

The gap in understanding here is that Signal already trusts iOS by providing an app. It trusts it even more by providing notifications (with sender and content) that go through Apple’s systems. It integrates with CallKit to work with the Phone app. Putting iCloud alone in a separate bucket doesn’t make sense. They could’ve done this same backup with a 64 character recovery key and stored the data in iCloud. Signal made an intentional choice not to allow backups on iOS.

One can only hope that the point about supporting other backup endpoints/storage gets implemented sooner rather than having to wait several more years.

[palata]

> They could’ve done this same backup with a 64 character recovery key and

Again: they could have, but it would have taken time and resources. The complaint here is not that Signal doesn't want to allow backups: they are just announcing a secure backup feature.

The complaint is that Signal did not do it earlier, and instead decided to prevent what they considered an insufficient solution.

> Putting iCloud alone in a separate bucket doesn’t make sense.

Of course it makes sense. What you say is akin to saying "end to end encryption makes no sense, because if you have to trust iOS anyway, you may as well trust the server".

Because I trust Android and run Signal there does not mean that I want it to auto-upload my messages to Google Drive. I don't see what makes it so hard to understand.

> One can only hope that the point about supporting other backup endpoints/storage gets implemented sooner rather than having to wait several more years.

Yes, I hope that too. On top of hoping, one could donate, to slightly contribute to paying the developers that work on it.