all my user data is inacessbile because Signal app is bricked, stuck in "Transfer Account & Messages" function

[UX-GURU]

• [x] I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates
• [x] I am submitting a bug report for existing functionality that does not work as intended
• [x] This isn't a feature request or a discussion topic

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Bug description

When I open the Signal app, I am unable to access any of my data, including messages I have sent, and messages I have received.

Steps to reproduce

• don't update the Signal app for several months
• at some point the Signal App will tell you that you need to update Signal. So you install a new version of Signal from the App Store, and then the next time you open Signal, you get a message telling you that you've been logged out of your Signal account
• close the Signal App
• open the Signal App

Actual result: Describe here what happens after you run the steps above (i.e. the buggy behaviour) -Signal app is bricked, stuck in "Transfer Account & Messages" function

Expected result: Describe here what should happen after you run the steps above (i.e. what would be the correct behaviour) -Signal app should not be bricked, should let you read your ....... messages, your user data, etc., without needing to re-activate your account, which you CAN NOT DO by the way, because even though you still have your same phone number, Signal verification won't work for that phone number anymore because apparently Signal developers aren't getting paid enough millions of dollars? I dunno how to explain this level of fail. Try to activate on a different phone number and that will ONLY WORK IF YOU AGREE TO DELETE ALL YOUR MESSAGES.

Screenshots

why bother with screenshots, no one's going to fix this anyway.

Device info

Device: iPad Air

iOS version: 12.5.7

Signal version: Signal is self-bricked, so I can't get the version number.

[EvanHahn-Signal]

why bother with screenshots, no one's going to fix this anyway.

Could you post a screenshot so we can see what things look like?

[UX-GURU]

[UX-GURU]

Please rest assured that we care about user experience, and we definitely do not want to randomly and arbitrarily lock users out of accessing their data.

Well, umm thanks I guess. But if you don't want to lock users out of accessing their messages, then why is this "transfer account & messages" activation screen programmed to do specifically that? There's no option to bypass this screen and go to the regular user interface. It's patently absurd... The application arbitrarily decides the user needs to re-activate, and so it bricks all functionality until the user obeys. And meanwhile, the damn activation functionality is broken, so the user is screwed. All the user's messages - gone! Who in their right mind would use Signal or recommend it to their friends knowing that the entire application can self-brick at any random time? More importantly, who in their right mind would program an app to behave this way? What kind of psychopathic anti-social mentality does this? And how can this same psychopathic mentality be trusted not to provide backdoor access to the NSA? At least if it was ransomware, I could pay the ransom to get my app back. Is there some Signal Dev I could pay off to let me back into the app? This is beyond insane.

[stale[bot]]

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.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been closed due to inactivity.