Signal is launching its first paid feature: the ability to make secure, end-to-end encrypted backups of your media history older than 45 days and of your text message history for $1.99 per month.
“Media requires a lot of storage, and storing and transferring large amounts of data is expensive,” Signal’s VP of engineering, Jim O’Leary, says in a blog post. “As a nonprofit that refuses to collect or sell your data, Signal needs to cover those costs differently than other tech organizations that offer similar products but support themselves by selling ads and monetizing data.”
Crucial detail:
The backup archives are “stored without a direct link to a specific backup payment or Signal user account,” O’Leary says. You’ll use a recovery key to unlock your backups, but if you lose that key, the company “cannot help you recover it.”
And this reader comment was clarifying IMO:
This solves a user issue of changing a phone and their Signal message history is just gone, which to normal users, is not acceptable.
Keeping them definitely seems to increase possible risks, but for most people this is a requirement, so good move on their part (guessing it’s optional) - when it’s rolled out.
Not sure how to feel about the pricing
Just backup locally and save it wherever you want, for free. Storing backups takes space and someone has to pay for it.
$24/year. I’ve spent 24 bucks in far worse ways.
It looks like there’s an option to store backups locally and upload them elsewhere if you don’t want to pay for their service.
Actually, I would prefer it if they offered their subscription service through data plans or balance, just like WhatsApp did before Meta bought it.
Yes, that would be better indeed
