this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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I’m not leaving Signal until someone implements keeping data at rest encrypted on both ends and requires multi factor unlock (bio+pin is my choice).
So sick of E2E clients that leave the data in plaintext on the devices and then back it up in plaintext to the cloud.
Does Signal back up in plaintext in the cloud? (If so that doesn't sound like E2E encryption… unless the 'ends' are uh… also constituted as the cloud itself which is… defeating the purpose).
Where do the pub/ private keys live, exactly, tbh. (Assuming it is asymmetric encryption that they use?)
Edit: ah, misread. I thought you said that you were not joining it due to it storing plain text in the cloud.
Hm... If they're not being stored on the cloud, that means offline users would never receive messages, unless Signal is purely P2P. I haven't looked at the project, or the source, but I find it hard to believe -- you can't really do user lookups without some sort of middleware in the cloud.
You're right, Signal is not P2P. The way Signals messaging pipeline works is like this - note I'm oversimplifying it for accessibility.
Sending a message to
BobSend.Bob.Bob- this means Signal's server can see its a unique user, but not what their name is.See their blog post about Private Contact Discovery, they've spent a long time figuring out how to engineer a method to know as little as possible about you.
Thanks for the explanation.
Yeah, but messengers, such as WhatsApp for instance, will send you missed messages once you're back online. That's what I was referring to.
No, signal does not do cloud backups. The keys live on the end users devices.