Closed JohnDohe closed 1 month ago
kenpowers-signal
commented
4 years ago Hi, @JohnDohe. Devices are de-registered from the Signal Service after 30 days of inactivity, at that point any messages queued up for delivery to that device are dropped. Once you re-link your Desktop instance is essentially a brand new device and will not receive any messages from the period of time it was offline.
I've marked this as a bug so we can put a more clear message in the product.
elmicha
commented
4 years ago Maybe you can add a feature that opens the Signal desktop instance every 29 days, if it has not been opened in the meantime? Or save some token somewhere to re-recognize the desktop device? Or just keep the device link on your service for more than 30 days, e.g. a year? If I sell my device and don't factory reset or wipe it, and the buyer is a bad guy - does it really take him more than 30 days to reconnect and read all my messages?
reetp
commented
4 years ago I go through periods of not using the desktop app. Could be several weeks at a time.
The link is still there in the mobile app. The OLD messages are still visible in the desktop client (why if you have broken the link?). Nothing to say that this would happen - just.... silence, and puzzlement.
Technically the message is wrong as this WAS a linked device, so it most definitely is NOT new, hence the confusion. But SIGNAL broke it. Not me. (and I am pretty sure this didn't use to happen).
But the reality is it seems that quite a few don't want the link broken (there are several bugs on same or similar issues).
Perhaps an option for the user to decide when to break the link?
30 days, 3 months, never ?
And a notification in the app that this is going to happen??
reetp
commented
4 years ago Note this IS a bug too because:
Old messages are still viewable - if the link is broken they should be discarded
The existing message is wrong and misleading
These would be feature requests:
Notification of pending link deletion on the phone app
Choice of deletion period
stale[bot]
commented
3 years ago This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.
JohnDohe
commented
3 years ago This remains a problem.
Signal techies should fix this somehow.
indutny-signal
commented
3 years ago This is on our radar. Assigning to myself to keep the bot away.
JohnDohe
commented
3 years ago When do you see it being implemented?
Stan
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On Mon, Sep 27, 2021 at 3:11 PM Fedor Indutny @.***> wrote:
This is on our radar. Assigning to myself to keep the bot away.
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bllngr
commented
1 year ago So, @indutny-signal, any update on this? I just had to relink a previously working device, and only after finding this bug report I understand why. It's not uncommon to have multiple devices linked, and open the clients only every few weeks. Can you please at least include a warning somewhere?
indutny-signal
commented
1 year ago This is still on our list, but we didn't get to it yet. Sorry! Your linked device should be now good for 30 days of being offline (instead of 14 days previously). Hope that it helps a bit!
JohnDohe
commented
1 year ago Hello M. Fedor Indutny,
Thank you for the update!
Another request: I need to be able to link more than five (5) devices.
How to link more than five (5) devices?
Thank you!
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On Mon, Nov 28, 2022 at 12:19 PM Fedor Indutny @.***> wrote:
This is still on our list, but we didn't get to it yet. Sorry!
Your linked device should be now good for 30 days of being offline (instead of 14 days previously).
Hope that it helps a bit!
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kojid0
commented
9 months ago Wouldn't it be a solution to simply allow the user to transfer the chat history anytime, if desired? Should only be possible if the user has set up a PIN and could be further protected by 2FA?
JohnDohe
commented
9 months ago Wouldn't it be a solution to simply allow the user to transfer the chat history anytime, if desired? Should only be possible if the user has set up a PIN and could be further protected by 2FA?
I routinely use more than 5 devices, in more than one location. It would be a hassle to continually transfer. So, no, not the most desirable solution.
nekohayo
commented
1 month ago This is also a problem for anyone who has to travel for extended periods of time to countries that outlaw Signal. I happen to need to do this now, with a business trip lasting for about 35 days, and for security reasons I cannot bring my Signal-capable devices (whether mobile, desktop or laptop) with me. Same goes if I take a long offline vacation, or if I were to be on a long sick leave, or something like that.
The current situation means that I would have to give my home's keys to my non-technical neighbors and ask them to go power on my computers every few weeks in my absence, just so that those devices can ping the Signal servers. It's ironic that I have to compromise on the physical security of my home and devices in order to satisfy the arbitrary rule of a piece of security-centric software.
nekohayo
commented
1 month ago Personally, it would make a ton more sense to me if, instead of forcefully auto-unlinking without user confirmation, Signal instead sent a periodic reminder notification to other devices about any long-idle device, to reconfirm whether they are still in use and considered secure (and even if they are not, then the user must explicitly ask for the dead/compromised device to be unlinked)…
jamiebuilds-signal
commented
1 month ago @nekohayo There is now an in-app banner that tells you when a linked device hasn't been active in awhile and will unlink in a couple days. Granted it's not a push notification. If you don't recognize the device or just don't want it linked anymore you can go to "Settings → Linked Devices" on your phone.
I'm going to close this issue as I believe it solves the original request well enough. If you'd like to request additional features, the best place to do that is in the forums: https://community.signalusers.org/c/feature-requests/17
nekohayo
commented
1 month ago Thanks for at least adding the notification part, unfortunately it does not solve the "I do not want this to automatically unlink at all unless I explicitly ask for it", at least not for 6 months (like @purpleidea suggested in #4730).
The problem with the "punt it to forums" approach is that it does not sound more likely to happen with that approach, and for me, losing all my history after every trip or illness is a "bug", not a "feature request to not lose data". Searching for unlink you have dozens of such forum threads, most of which are advocating for the kind of flexibility I'm talking about:
I'm linking to those here mostly as reference for others. It doesn't seem to me that it would make a difference if I were to add yet another thread on top of that pile, I suppose it would just get merged into one of those existing ones above.
jamiebuilds-signal
commented
1 month ago I understand and I also like the idea of making it harder to accidentally get unlinked. I'm not sure we'd solve it by allowing the user to opt-out of unlinking for as long as six months, but there are certainly things we could do to make the experience better -- and ways that we can make getting unlinked not nearly as much of an issue.
But we get lots of feature requests from lots of people about lots of work we could do, it's just a matter of prioritization and what we have time to work on.
We use the forum that as a centralized place for all feature requests because we review it regularly as part of our prioritization. We don't use GitHub in the same way, we only use it for bug reports. Which is why we generally close most feature requests immediately here and refer to the forums
Since there are already threads about this feature request, I recommend that you go upvote or comment on them because that helps bump the priority up
Bug Description
I had to re-link my Mac Signal desktop app after 30 days of inactivity. This caused my Mac desktop Signal app to lose the texts in that 30 day period - they would not sink: "For your security, conversation history isn't transferred to new linked devices." BUT my desktop Mac is NOT a "new device"! Its the same device as that listed in my iPhone7+'s Signal app! I should be able to simply re-activate the same device?
Steps to Reproduce
Actual Result:
See steps 1-4 above.
Expected Result:
Just re-activate the linked device that is already there in the iPhone's Signal Linked Devices list.
Screenshots
Platform Info
Signal Version:
v1.34.1 Operating System:Mojave 10.14.6
Linked Device Version:
iOS: 13.4.1
Link to Debug Log
https://debuglogs.org/6e0a12bd5a0a603721d940bece7345674c66b14cdb453d110220512d2b4a8ad8