Encrypt all the things!

Having some chat history is useful. It's solved some problems (e.g. when was X's birthday?, what was the name of that plumber that someone recommended, etc) but, yes, the vast majority of chat history is not worth keeping.

Pretty much everything I've answered with chat history could be answered by (a) asking again or (b) writing it down properly when finding out the info (such as someone's birthday).

Since I have an iPhone my chat/text history is backed up when I do my weekly sync.

When deleting vhats, does checking delete all media leave my google photo backups of it alone?

Yes... until the next backup.

Actually I can't vouch for that as I don't know how the backups are done... but by observation I'm guessing incremental backups with an occasional compaction to remove deleted stuff.

I used the WhatsApp "delete media" option for most of my chats, and the ones with a few people I know I would like to keep images from I did manually... which on Android you can do via Google Photos and looking at the Utilities and Device Folders... after deleting all the shit I'm not interested, I added WhatsApp images to be backed up to Google Photos.

I have a terrible memory so I save stuff I will need immediately, because if I don't, it'll be gone. Most of my Signal chats are setup for 1 week expiry anyway.

Those bloody annoying cookie messages when browsing. How do you deal with them? Obviously they make it super easy to accept all and a pita to switch each individual category to off and save...

How do you deal with them?

They're often served from a 3rd-party domain so NoScript blocks most of them for me.

On mobile I use Firefox Focus which kills everything each session so I don't mind hitting accept all for fast browsing.

NoScript extension in Firefox is my default browser for everything that isn't Google or LFGSS (both of which get Chrome).

With NoScript, I don't see the vast majority of them... if I care about a site enough to want to enable JS, then I will probably accept a cookie (Firefox will reject third party ones too).

WhatsApp installs down ~10%, Signal installs up 18x.

While we were debating how to broach the topic of moving the family chats to Signal, the in-laws just went ahead and installed it by themselves!

I'd never in a million years have predicted this level of momentum away from WhatsApp/Facebook

Yeah, who did? Feels almost revolutionary. Do Signal have the technical capacity to scale up to accommodate the mass migration?

Funding might also an issue. Signal might be getting by with the existing funding setup (a mixture of donations and general philanthropy) but a massive ramp up might not allow this to continue in the same way.

Whatsapp used to charge but were then run as a loss leader by FB.

Yeah, who did? Feels almost revolutionary. Do Signal have the technical capacity to scale up to accommodate the mass migration?

Yes.

Aside from some of the best engineers joining them, the WhatsApp founders who rage-quit Facebook donated tens of millions of dollars to them (as did Musk and many other CEOs and SV elite).

rage-quit Facebook

nice

https://www.wired.com/story/signal-foundation-whatsapp-brian-acton/

Interesting read.

Sadly i also get the "why didnt i think of a comms app" so i can be worth billions.

A comms app...?! On a PHONE! You what mate?

That's nice to hear.

I don't usually donate to apps, but I thought I should at least chuck the min suggested £3 once I found out it was nfp.

So, exporting and deleting chats from WA. Is there a desktop way to do this? Feels (no doubt by design) tiresome and clunky to do on the phone app.

comms app.

WhatsApp
Signal
Telegram

No shit
(tone lost)

I always assumed that comms apps on smartphones started out in the US, where SMS were both shit and punishingly expensive.

Well, Signal has locked me out for no good reason. Identical issue you to you @hugo7 - is this the issue you had?

https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-is-locked-enter-passphrase-i-have-not-set-up-a-passphrase/19581

I must admit I moved to iphone mostly due to imessage here in SF. everyone and their dog uses it.

that said, I ported my number to google voice so now haha can't use it without giving everyone my disposable number.

Just found myself making a GDPR request to Twilio for Authy to give me the seeds and secrets to my accounts.

Authy has bugs and I've noticed a different set of accounts being listed on the desktop apps than on the Android app.

This gives me anxiety... 35 Authy accounts... I sure as hell don't want to have to reset and regenerate those. Especially as some are things like HMRC and I imagine it to be a nightmare, it's bad enough rotating the Google one.

And yet, there is no export function anywhere in Authy... so even though I can see all of the data in Android, unless I root my phone I cannot access them.

I do have a spare and older Android phone, so could install Authy, root the phone, and then export from there... but frankly, Authy should provide an export function, and lacking one perhaps a GDPR request can achieve the same.

And if you're wondering what I might try... Aegis: https://github.com/beemdevelopment/Aegis

But first I need to get my accounts liberated from Authy.

Doesn’t that one take a long time to load?