Finally, the signal gets a long -awaited feature

Signal managed to put itself as a strong competitor to WhatsApp and similar applications, but it lacks one very important thing – cloud backup. Now, we have, although they work slightly differently from how backups work in other applications.

Signal has recently announced that it will add a safe encoded backup system and a system to a party to its application. For years, there was a major defect in the service that losing or destroying the phone means the permanent loss of all the history of the messages. This will solve this problem. According to Signal, the backup system depends on the structure of “zero knowledge”. This means that the signal itself cannot reach the contents of the backup-the system safety depends on a 64-letter recovery key that is created and stored exclusively on the user device. This key is the only way to decode and restore backup archive.

The point has made it clear that he does not see this key and cannot help the user restore it if he is lost. The liability is fully on the user to store the key safely, for example, by writing it or keeping it in a reliable password manager. The loss of the key makes the backup permanently accessible.

It works differently for applications like WhatsApp in other ways as well. The signal offers two options to those who choose to enable the feature. The free layer will automatically on a backup copy of the user’s full text messages record, along with another 45 days of media files, such as photos and videos. For those who want to maintain the history of the entire media until after a 45 -day window, a paid subscription plan is available for $ 1.99 per month. It is pushed, but it will allow you to keep everything. Once activated, the backup process operates automatically on your phone, and create a new archive every 24 hours to replace the previous day file. This daily update also does a good job in respect of your privacy settings; Any messages that are deleted manually or set to disappear within the next 24 hours of the subsequent backup. The display messages are also not included in any backup.

Currently, this is only launched for Android Beta, but it will be finally released not only for the stable version of the application, but also for iOS and desktop versions. If it is implemented properly, this may be really good, although the backup copies are very limited unless you pay real money that may serve as stopping for some people. If you are going to transport phones and want to move to all your media record, you can switch to the paid version, deport, and cancel the subscription-this way you can pay $ 2 as one-time payment instead of paying two dollars per month. $ 2 is not much, but it can be a difficult sale if you already pay for many other services.

source: signal