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Comment by meibo | Hacker News Reader

> 1) Users don’t want to lose their entire message history when they lose/change their phones so apps of this kind never become massively popular.

I think this is a key point to consider for Signal and the other "good" messengers - there's ways to do secure backups, it just needs to be implemented so well that you won't miss the convenience of Google Drive backups.

I tend to fall back on anecdotes a lot, but the first thing my relatives ask me when setting up a new phone is "will I have my texts" - people want to be able to look through the past 10 years of conversation and especially media with someone and WhatsApp makes this as easy as one click during setup.

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Matrix already has solved it. Message history is stored on the servers, like in Telegram.

With the difference, that the end user has a secret. This secret can be written down/saved and/or be implicitly passed through his/her own devices by e.g. scanning a QR code.

This works simultaneously across arbitrary platforms with arbitrary many devices including web.

Telegram seems to want to create the illusion that there is nothing which can provide the experience of Telegram with encryption. It is not true.

Matrix seems to be the best implementation of this I've seen up to now, I agree.

Even just giving you the option to upload to Drive or iCloud, while allowing you to keep the key yourself on a note or another device, would be a step in the right direction for an app like WhatsApp that has no "messages" on the server at all after delivery(or so it always used to work, not sure if it's still the case - my GDPR export from yesterday literally only had my profile picture and contacts).

If you requires them to write down or print, then there will be people just not do it and still lost their data all together.

If you just infer it from user password. Someone is definitely going to use weak password and get cracked in seconds.

If you requires a strict password rule to enforce strong password, someone is going to forget it and lock them out of their account. Because they only use this password here and there is literally no reason you use it the second time(most people only login from 1 device. Unless it is broken, you are not going to login the second time).

Requires a physical device is also a no go. Because devices can break. Unless you have another backup, you are screwed.

I am not sure there is a method that is secure(that don't lost message by accident) to most of the users.

Lost messages and contacts is way more risky then your message may be seen by CIA to most users, I believe.

> and WhatsApp makes this as easy as one click during setup.

unless you switch platforms. then you lose it all

Yes, this happened to me after iOS -> Android switch all messages was wiped, you cant load icloud backup on android

>you cant load icloud backup on android

for free

If you're willing to pay for an app, you can definitely do that.

https://www.syncios.com/icloud/how-to-recover-data-from-itun...

*I'm not advocating for this specific app, I've never used it and couldn't comment on how well it works, just an example*

The only mention of WhatsApp on that page is a link to https://www.syncios.com/whatsapp-transfer/

Not sure if the WhatsApp transfer is a feature of their main product or if it’s sold separately.

Either way I’d use the buy button on the page that is about WhatsApp to be sure, if I was looking to transfer WhatsApp data between iOS and Android.

I've just spent like 10 hours this week trying to figure out how to get my Android history into iOS. I finally did succeed with one the paid apps, but it's crazy to me that Whatsapp hasn't fixed this (and neither has Signal, by the way).

Paid app is the new perl script!

I wonder why there are paid apps an NO, ZERO information on how to do it with a text editor, some copyaste and javac/xcode. Like DeCSS, from a more civilized age

Wire has backups and is e2e even for groups and all.

Amazingly this is why I’m attracted to Signal and have set all chats to 1 week auto delete.

To me text chats should be ephemeral.

If I want something to stick around for years, send to email.

Even email is not permanent. There was a discussion a few months ago on HN where people were complaining that very old attachments just don't load up in Gmail, because they are not backed up on the servers.

There's a difference between email not being permanent and gmail not being permanent.

Logically speaking, my sentence is correct.

The blog post is old. Telegram now has auto delete for chats for e2e chats and even manual delete including deleting your partners messages if you want to (on both sides - obviously not in groups). So yes the quick chat that you dont want to be archived anywhere can be deleted quickly and easily. Ofc this does not prevent the other side from storing it in advance but its rather unlikely and It would no longer be possible to proof that yous send these messages. It would just be a text file that could be crafted. So depending on what you sent you have plausible deniability even if a backup exists.

>manual delete including deleting your partners messages if you want to (on both sides - obviously not in groups

You can delete other people's messages for everyone in the chat if you're an admin of the group.

Yes, obviously you can as admin but that's just the admin power. You can also delete/edit your own messages in groups but they will be visible in the admin log for 2 days. So these 2 features are not meant to remove your messages from being stored/archived. Its just the normal moderation feature of group chats.

It's trivial to give everyone in a group admin rights with only the permission to delete messages.

You can also delete all messages in a group from a specific user in one action.

no, its not. you can not do that there is an admin limit 20 iirc

I don't have such a distrust for the people I talk to that this is desirable. I find it pretty cool to scroll through old history and remember what we were up to years ago.

Or better copy that to your notes- icloud/OneNote.

Last time I checked WhatsApp deleted media older than several months. Moreover, there was no way to re-download that media from the cloud, I had to ask counterpart to re-send me the file (it was a work document).

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