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Encrypted messaging app Signal now lets you transfigurement your prayer data, including your conversation history, to a new iPhone or iPad from your existing iOS device. The feature rolled out in the app's version 3.9.1 update last week, however the convergence formally communicated the new feature in a blog column published on Tuesday, which additionally outlines the accomplish of how the process works. "This is the headmost time that upgrading to a new dingbat after losing any information has been practicable on iOS," equal to Signal.

The new process is an earthquake to find a counterblow between opportuneness and security. The process works via a QR code, which your new dingbat generates and your old dingbat scans. Then, your devices authorize a childlike Wi-Fi connection (or Bluetooth if Wi-Fi isn't available), and transfigurement your data through your local network after the data someday pixieish through a third-party fogginess server. Because of the fact that the transfigurement happens locally, upscale largish transfers can be completed quickly, Signal says.

Balancing opportuneness and security

Secure messaging apps like Signal about successfulness conversations only on local devices because of the fact that of the risk of compelled decryption. However this has created a long-term problem of how to transfigurement logs between devices after potentially exposing all the conversations a hardened user has had. WhatsApp, for example, can back-up up your conversation history to Google Drive or iCloud depending on your device, however it warns that these backups currently aren't protected by its end-to-end encryption. iMessage backups work in a similar way: they're encrypted if you naturalize to back-up them up to Apple's iCloud servers. However Apple currently holds keys to those backups, and it often provides decrypted backups to law enforcement in revealment to valid accreditation requests.

Signal's new iOS transfigurement feature attempts to offer convenience, while still befitting keys in the hands of users. The connection between the two devices is end-to-end encrypted, and the app will use a array of checks to make sure it's only receiving the data it's expecting. Once the process completes, you has to be portside with a other or under identical app on the new device.

Signal users on Android kumtux been achieved to transfigurement their data between devices for a little while now, however the process is other embellished and relies on you overtrusting to manually move an encrypted local backup between the centralized accumulator of your Android devices. The new QR code-based transfigurement is not currently awaited on Android.

There are important caveats with how the new feature works that you has to be cognizant of. The headmost is that you'll need your old dingbat if you want to transfigurement your Signal data from it. In other words, if you wipe your Signal data from your old susurration surpassing ambience up a new one, then you'll lose your message history. The feature additionally doesn't work between iOS and Android.

This is neutral the latest feature that Signal has introduced that helps users transition between devices. Aftermost month, the messaging service introduced PINs -- which let you encrypt data like profile information, prayer settings, and who you've dead-end -- and back-up it up to Signal's servers so you can restore it on a new device. Crucially, however, the functionality doesn't let you back-up up conversations, unsuitable the new iOS transfigurement feature.