Setting the date forward too far causes Signal Desktop to unlink, and resetting doesn't cause it to relink

[alexander-novo]

Using a supported version?

• I have searched searched open and closed issues for duplicates.
• I am using Signal-Desktop as provided by the Signal team, not a 3rd-party package.

Overall summary

Occasionally, my computer's time will skip forward ~100 years on restart. It's easy to fix (just need to go into the settings and manually start a sync with the time server), but any apps that start on login will fail any certification, due to certificates expiring. For most apps, I can restart them after fixing the time and everything is A-OK, but Signal Desktop will immediately unlink itself from my mobile account and no amount of restarting after fixing the clock will fix this.

Steps to reproduce

These steps will be Windows-oriented, since I am on Windows 10, but I imagine it works similarly for any operating system.

1. Disable automatic time syncing. In Windows 10, this can be done in Settings > Time & Language > Date & Time > Set time automatically.
2. Set date to something ~100 years in the future. On Windows 10, this cannot be done through the normal settings interface (which is limited to 30 years in the future). Instead, you can use the cmd.exe command date in an elevated command prompt to change the date to something in 2124.
3. Restart the computer
4. Upon restarting, open signal. Observe that it has unlinked itself from the phone.
5. Re-enable automatic time syncing. Observe that the date is now correct.
6. Restart Signal by first using File > Quit. Observe that it is still unlinked.

Expected result

After changing the date to be correct and restarting Signal, I would expect that it should realize that the date is correct and ignore the earlier hiccup.

Actual result

Instead, you must relink the app to Signal Desktop - something I have to do often, and causes me to miss messages.

Screenshots

No response

Signal version

7.1.1

Operating system

Windows 10

Version of Signal on your phone

6.61.2.0

Link to debug log

No response

[ayumi-signal]

Hi @alexander-novo , sorry this is happening for you, it sounds frustrating. Unlinking with time travel is intentional, but I'll discuss with the team to see how we can improve this case.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@alexander-novo We've made a change that will prevent this in the future - it's in our current beta release, and will soon make its way to production.

[alexander-novo]

Hey everyone, I appreciate the extraordinarily quick turnaround on this. Thank you!