LINE

From Archiveteam
Jump to navigation Jump to search
LINE
URL https://line.me/
Status Online!
Archiving status Special case
Archiving type Unknown
IRC channel #archiveteam-bs (on hackint)

LINE started out as an instant messaging app on Android[1] and iOS[2] in 2011, but its business has since expanded into a service provider including short video[3], OTT[4], music[5][6], comics[7][8], news[9][10], online shopping[11][12], taxi hailing[13], and mobile payment[14].

LINE is popular in East Asia and has achieved overwhelming market occupation in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan.

LINE Corporation and Yahoo! Japan Corporation were acquired by the same holding company, Z Holdings, in 2021 and will be merged on 2023-10-01.[15] Overlapping services such as LINE LIVE[IAWcite.todayMemWeb] and LINE BLOG have been terminated.

Account limitations

Before April 2020, LINE accounts could be created with mobile phone numbers, email addresses, and Facebook accounts, but now only phone numbers can be used, and each phone number can only create one account.[16]

Each account must be bound to a unique mobile device, and PC-side login requires 2FA on the phone regularly.

If an account is logged in on another phone, an unrecoverable account transfer procedure will begin, and all the data on the previous phone will be forcibly deleted once it connected to the LINE server.

LINE Lite[17] is a lightweight version that can be used to log in with a second or more phones, but it has been discontinued on 2022-02-28 00:00 JST (UTC+9).

Messenger

LINE Messenger is notorious for its poor data retention and backup features.

Unlike Facebook Messenger or Discord which preserve messages on their servers permanently, LINE servers only store sent messages for about 14 days. If the phone is turned off for a month, or a received image is not clicked to get its original resolution, or a received PDF is not downloaded in time, the data is lost forever.

In the past, users could manually export each chat to a zip file with all attachments and metadata, and import them back to their original form after the account was transferred to a new phone. This feature has been removed since version 9.1.0, and only text can be synced to Google Drive or iCloud where it is invisible to the user, or exported as txt which cannot be imported back. Both will result in loss of images, attachments and stickers.

LINE officially recommends that users back up received attachments to LINE Keep, an free in-app storage service of 1GiB.

References

External links

Instant messengers
'80s

talkIRC

'90s

ICQAIMYahoo! MessengerMSN MessengerJabber/XMPPQQ

'00s

SkypeGoogle TalkFacebook MessengerWhatsApp

'10s

KikViberSnapchatLINETelegramSlackGitter
KeybaseSignalMusical.ly/TikTokMatrixDiscordInstagram