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Signal is elevating its privacy-first approach with a new secure backup feature, allowing users to create end-to-end encrypted archives of their chats. Announced this week, the opt-in functionality ensures that messages, photos, videos, and files can be restored even if a phone is lost or broken—addressing a critical gap in user data resilience. Currently in beta for Android, it will expand to iOS and desktop soon, reinforcing Signal's commitment to cross-platform security.

How Secure Backups Work

When enabled via Signal's settings, backups run automatically each day, capturing all text messages and media attachments. Crucially, it excludes ephemeral content like disappearing or view-once messages to uphold privacy intentions. At the core of this system is a 64-character recovery key generated locally on the device. As Jim O'Leary, Signal's VP of Engineering, emphasized in the announcement:

"Your recovery key is the only way to 'unlock' your backup when you need to restore access to your messages. Losing it means losing access to your backup permanently, and Signal cannot help you recover it."

This key is never shared with Signal, ensuring only the user holds the decryption power—a design that epitomizes zero-trust principles.


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visually outlines the backup process, showing how data is encrypted before cloud storage.

The Shift to Paid Services

For the first time, Signal is introducing a paid option. The free tier provides 100 MiB of storage, covering text and recent media (up to 45 days), but users needing extended history can subscribe for $1.99/month, boosting capacity to 100GB. O'Leary justified this move, stating:

"The reason we're doing this is simple: media requires a lot of storage, and storing and transferring large amounts of data is expensive."


This pivot reflects the harsh economics of privacy tech. While Signal has long relied on donations, the subscription model could ensure sustainability without compromising encryption—a delicate balance that other secure apps may now scrutinize.

Broader Privacy Context

Signal's backup launch follows recent enhancements like January's encrypted message sync for linked devices and May's 'screen security' default on Windows to counter AI snooping. Combined with last year's username anonymity feature, these updates solidify Signal as a vanguard against data exploitation. Yet, the paid tier raises questions: Will users accept monetization for premium privacy, or could it fragment access? As surveillance risks grow, this innovation sets a precedent—security isn't free, but with end-to-end encryption, it remains uncompromised.

Source: BleepingComputer