“It's a feature that nobody should rely on for security,” Duff told Motherboard in an online chat. In May, security researcher Patrick Wardle found that ‘disappearing’ Signal messages could be stored indefinitely on Mac hard drives due to the computer’s notification bar storing a copy.īugs like the Mac problem and the latest Signal issue, Duff argued, show why people should be careful even using disappearing messages. Last month, in what appears to be a completely separate issue, Signal had to push an update to its desktop app to purge self-destructing messages that were being stored on Mac computers. In 2016, several users said disappearing messages did not vanish in a post on Github. Other Signal users have previously reported similar issues in the past. However, in the examples those messages were indeed delivered-two were part of conversations in which the recipients responded, and on Friday, one source confirmed they did indeed open and read the sent message even if they didn’t reply at the time. In these cases, which happened in communications between multiple different people on different devices, the messages that have not been deleted are marked as “Sent” rather than delivered.

But the recipient’s phone has the same issue they only have their own half of the conversation, Motherboard confirmed. In another set of messages, also sent on May 22 and set to disappear after a week, only half of the conversation remains on one phone Signal did successfully delete the recipient’s responses. In one chat that had messages set to disappear after one week, a message from May 22 remained as of Friday-around two and a half weeks after it was sent.

Details on our SecureDrop, a system to anonymously submit documents or information, can be found here. Got a tip? You can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai on Signal on +1 9.

Disappearing messages signal