SignalSep 8, 2025

Until now, if you lost or broke your phone, your Signal message history was gone, a real challenge for everyone whose most important conversations happen in Signal. So, with careful design & development, we’re rolling out opt-in secure backups.

Secure backups will let you save an archive of your Signal messages remotely in privacy-preserving form, refreshed daily.

Now available in the latest Android beta release, rolling out to iOS & Desktop soon

https://signal.org/blog/introducing-secure-backups/

Introducing Signal Secure Backups

In the past, if you broke or lost your phone, your Signal message history was gone. This has been a challenge for people whose most important conversations happen on Signal. Think family photos, sweet messages, important documents, or anything else you don’t want to lose forever. This explains wh...

Signal Messenger
Show threadtuxwiseSep 8, 2025

@signalapp

  • Why is this remote-only?
  • Where is my backup stored, exactly?
  • What guarantees are you giving concerning the availability of one's backup?
  • Why is this still, in 2025, all tied to smartphones, and to phone numbers, with desktop applications being only second-class citizens of the ecosystem?
    • Show threadShanie MyrsTearSep 8, 2025

    @tuxwise @signalapp Some of these are big, rude questions for open source free software, don't you think? #4 in particular.

    https://github.com/signalapp

    Signal

    Signal has 126 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

    GitHub
    Show threadAlexTECPlayzSep 8, 2025

    @shanie @tuxwise "big, rude questions" lol, considering Signal's revenue and expenses in 2023 were $35.8 million (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840), and considering how the USA is going.

    Some people still call Signal "European software" - but is it, when all of its infrastructure is centralized to servers based in the US? No federation, no plans for that, and this phone number concern is well grounded in the history of Twilio, the third-party intermediary that Signal uses to send SMS registration messages through - which costs them ~$6 million/year PLUS the fact that Twilio has a seriously bad track record when it comes to breaches.

    So bad in fact, that back in 2022 hackers broke into Twilio systems, which could have allowed hackers to read the registration messages, essentially being able to impersonate users. According to Signal themselves, the hackers targeted 1900 users (https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-a-third-party-sms-service-was-used-to-take-over-signal-accounts/)

    Signal Technology Foundation - Nonprofit Explorer

    Since 2013, the IRS has released data culled from millions of nonprofit tax filings. Use this database to find organizations and see details like their executive compensation, revenue and expenses, as well as download tax filings going back as far as 2001.

    ProPublica
    Show threadAlexTECPlayzSep 8, 2025

    @shanie @tuxwise Such a "big, rude" question to not have Signal end up spending a monstrous and almost definitely unsustainable $50 million/year by this year (per their estimates - https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/) AND to ensure that a third-party such as Twilio isn't involved in the process anymore.

    It's an important question these days - not just about dropping phone number verification, but also about federation and moving Signal's own infrastructure out of the US.

    Molly.im at the very least has received funding for a self-hosted Signal server from NLnet (https://nlnet.nl/project/Flatline/), so at least we'll eventually have an alternative to the central Signal server, but that's going to take a long while.

    And as for desktops being second-class citizens, this also matters more now than ever. Android is looking into requiring third-party devs to verify their apps, so an alternative OS such as pmOS still has to run Signal Desktop, which still requires Signal to be installed on Android or iOS.

    Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive

    Signal is the world’s most widely used truly private messaging app, and our cryptographic technologies provide extra layers of privacy beyond the Signal app itself. Since launching in 2013, the Signal Protocol—our end-to-end encryption technology—has become the de facto standard for private commu...

    Signal Messenger
    Show threadShanie MyrsTear

    @alextecplayz @tuxwise 35.8 mil in expenses and can still keep the lights on as a not for profit? Pretty amazing. Is that a knock on Signal?

    Regardless, thanks for the Twilo info - didn’t know that & more info is good info. I still think it’s a big ask, especially starting with “In 2025” like Signal hasn’t been playing catch-up with the Big Monoliths while still being the most secure of them all, to stretch thin because said Big Monoliths are changing the game.

    Sep 8, 2025 at 6:16pmWeb
    Show threadAlexTECPlayzSep 8, 2025

    @shanie @tuxwise I'm not trying to knock on Signal, they clearly are doing very well, AND they're compensating their 50 employees very competitively (in that Signal article I've linked they mentioned that they spend ~$19 million on staff wages, compensation, benefits, etc.).

    But the idea is that they can easily shave off like $6 million by giving Twilio a kick in the butt.

    As for catching up, I don't think that's necessarily the case (then again, it depends on what we're talking about catching up - users or software-wise?), considering WhatsApp uses Signal's encryption and verification + XMPP for their messaging.

    Show threadtuxwiseSep 8, 2025

    @shanie

    It would be a big ask if I hadn't seen them venture into features like "stories". Or cryptocurrencies, FWIW.

    Is it worth playing catch-up here, when getting rid of the phone number requirement is by far the most desired "feature" in the history of Signal?

    @alextecplayz