Signal, a messaging software that prioritises privacy has revealed on Monday that it is launching a feature that lets users save their text chats discussions and the last 45 days of media for free. Additionally, it is launching its first premium feature, providing comprehensive media backups with a storage capacity of up to 100GB.
Signal says its users can now create end-to-end encrypted backups of their chats using Signal’s new opt-in feature, which enables them to recover messages even in the event that their phones are stolen or destroyed.
In the past, users were unable to save any sort of backup of their discussions on the messaging app. If you misplaced or damaged your phone, this may be really problematic. There was no cloud backup, even though you could move chats across phones. That issue is now resolved with the new feature, increasing Signal’s value as a secure messaging tool.
Users of Signal’s free tier have 100MB of storage for text messages and media from the previous 45 days. In its blog post, the company stated that 100MB would be enough for “even heavy” customers and that it retains communications after compressing them.
“All of your text messages and the media from the last forty-five days can be safely backed up for free if you want to enable secure backups. “We also offer a paid subscription plan for US$1.99 per month if you want to back up your message history and media history for longer than 45 days,” stated Jim O’Leary, VP of Engineering at Signal.
Jim further stated that the company is introducing a premium function for the first time. They are doing this for the straightforward reason that media needs a lot of storage, and it costs money to store and send vast volumes of data.
The company offers a $1.99/month subscription plan with 100GB of storage for customer who wish to store more media than the last 45 days.
This is Signal’s first paid service, and the company claims that it is charging users to help cover storage costs while protecting their privacy.
While the storage size limit for subscription backups is 100 GB, the free tier offers 100 MiB of message storage, which includes files, GIFs, videos, photographs, and other attachments.
Through the app’s Settings, you can activate the secure backup option, which will start backing up your data every day.
After you enable safe backups from the Signal Settings menu, your device will automatically back up your chats daily (except messages set to disappear within the next 24 hours and view-once messages), updating the previous day’s archive.
Signal’s backups are secured by zero-knowledge technology, which means they aren’t connected to any single user or payment method. To unlock their backups, users will receive a 64-character recovery key produced on the device. In contrast to Signal’s competitors, WhatsApp provides end-to-end backup as an optional feature that users must activate.
This key is the only means to decrypt backups when you want to restore your messages, and it will never be shared with Signal.
After this testing period, secure backups will be made available to iOS and desktop devices as well as Android users in the most recent Signal beta version.
“When you need to regain access to your messages, the only way to ‘unlock’ your backup is using your recovery key. If you lose it, you will never be able to access your backup again, and Signal is unable to assist you in getting it back. If you’d like, you can create a new key,” O’Leary continued.
Signal launched end-to-end encrypted synchronisation of previous messages from users primary iOS or Android devices to newly connected devices, including desktop PCs and iPads, in January.
Four months later, all Windows 11 devices came with “screen security” activated by default. This feature was created to safeguard users’ privacy by preventing Microsoft’s AI-powered Recall feature from recording screenshots of their conversations.
Signal also revealed last year that users may conceal their phone numbers and interact with others by selecting unique nicknames.
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