this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Privacy
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In no way does Signal prevent conversations from being archived. For all you know, a recipient could be screenshotting all of your messages, and they could even be using the official app when doing so.
If you don't trust your contacts, probably shouldn't be messaging them anything sensitive.
Yes of course. Signal can archive messages and they can be restored, you can screenshot messages and you can have them backed up as part of a policy like icloud backups.
My question is more about how do you know you're interacting with an authentic signal client, and not a bastardized one.
At the moment you can't. The only realistic way I could see that happening is if the servers would check the app's digital signature and refuse the app from communicating with the official infrastructure if it didn't match.
Even then, nothing stops the client from lying to the server.
That's the point of digitally signing the app, to ensure its authenticity and integrity. TM and others wouldn't be able to resign the modified app with the Signal Foundation signature.
EDIT: Yeah after thinking more about it it's not a trivial problem, as you need to assume that the endpoint is inherently untrusted.
It's actually possible in a way:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SafetyNet
But you necessarily need to limit the devices and operating systems that are allowed. No custom ROMs, no root access, etc.
It's bullshit and breaks open computing as a concept.
Fuck Safetynet and Play Integrity.
Isn't that just delegating trust to a third party, e.g. here Google? It's not as if Google was somehow immune to 0 days.
Not to mention that a device that would pass Play Integrity is precisely the device I wouldn't ever consider doing anything private on. Which would defeat the whole point of Signal. It's already bad enough that it's so desktop-unfriendly while much fewer phones than computers that can run non-privacy-invasive OSes than computers...