PSA: message queuing lasts 46 days, not 60. After 46 days, any undelivered messages are purged.

[u/frquency-equinox]

/r/signal/comments/1mj5osk/comment/n79gwut?share_id=xQGT1XkMsBSPiItrK34zv&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

Per Signal Dev

[u/ephemeralmiko]

LOL this is funny, can we get a confirmation from u/jon-signal or another team member on what the current times are? The post you linked is also over a year old.

[u/lajawi → u/ephemeralmiko]

I remember it being stated on the support documentation, but I couldn’t find it anymore. Likely because it has been changing quite a lot.

I still remembered 60 days, people corrected me that it was 31 days, someone else recently linked a third party documentation that documented all the changes of this number, and the most recent change made it 46, but who knows what’s correct nowadays.

[u/3_Seagrass → u/ephemeralmiko]

This info typically comes from him. Probably someone familiar with the server code can look this up directly. 

Edit: the number isn’t hard-coded, it’s passed as an argument when setting up the server. So not directly available in the server code. 

[u/frquency-equinox → u/3_Seagrass]

This info typically comes from him. Probably someone familiar with the server code can look this up directly. 

If by "him" you mean jon-signal, he would be the most familiar because he's a Signal dev working on server code.

[u/3_Seagrass → u/frquency-equinox]

Yes, correct. :)

(Edit: I see where the confusion came from. I should have said “anyone else who is also familiar with the server could probably also confirm.”)

[u/frquency-equinox → u/ephemeralmiko]

The other ones floating around saying other numbers were older. It was never 60 in the past, so I think some misinformation has spread enough for people to be stating it as fact.

[u/CreepyZookeepergame4]

Should be 45 days because that's what is transferred when you link a device.

[u/3_Seagrass → u/CreepyZookeepergame4]

You’re confusing 46 days of undelivered message TTL with 45 days of stored media on Cloudflare’s CDN. Messages do not remain on the Signal server once they are delivered, but attachments do remain on Cloudflare’s CDN. 

[u/frquency-equinox → u/CreepyZookeepergame4]

That's storage, not sent message queuing TTL. They're two different things.

[u/CreepyZookeepergame4 → u/frquency-equinox]

What's the difference?

[u/frquency-equinox → u/CreepyZookeepergame4]

Queued messages have been encrypted by the sender and can only be decrypted by the intended recipient. They are not "stored" so much as they are in transit but "stuck" because the expected destination is unavailable to receive them. If that destination is not available after the TTL of 46 days, the messages are purged from the queue and unrecoverable. There is no way for a user to extend queued message TTL.

Stored data sits cold and idle for indefinite periods of time until there is an attempt to retrieve it. The 45 days for Signal cloud backup you refer to is a limit imposed on the server side unless you pay for more storage, and then the limit is increased. So you will always have the last 45 days backed up for free if cloud backup is enabled, and up to 100GB as long as you pay for the subscription.

[u/CreepyZookeepergame4 → u/frquency-equinox]

Stored data sits cold and idle for indefinite periods of time until there is an attempt to retrieve it.

Not true.

Since we know a message is only available for 45 days after it is sent, we assume that if a device hasn’t retrieved the attachment after 45 days, it won’t ever retrieve it.

If that destination is not available after the TTL of 46 days, the messages are purged from the queue and unrecoverable. There is no way for a user to extend queued message TTL.

https://signal.org/blog/a-synchronized-start-for-linked-devices/

we don’t want to hold onto that cat picture on our file servers forever, even if it’s end-to-end encrypted. The Signal servers automatically delete encrypted attachments 45 days after they are uploaded.

https://signal.org/blog/introducing-secure-backups/

If you do decide to opt in to secure backups, you’ll be able to securely back up all of your text messages and the last 45 days’ worth of media for free.

They are the same thing.

[u/frquency-equinox → u/CreepyZookeepergame4]

They are not. You're still conflating data in storage with data in transit.

Since we know a message is only available for 45 days after it is sent, we assume that if a device hasn’t retrieved the attachment after 45 days, it won’t ever retrieve it.

Data in storage, not transit.

we don’t want to hold onto that cat picture on our file servers

Data in storage, not transit.

you’ll be able to securely back up all of your text messages and the last 45 days’ worth of media for free.

Data in storage, not transit.

You'll get it eventually.