The Android developer just published an updated landing page for Google Messages, showing off key features ranging from customization, privacy and security, and, of course, AI.
On this landing page, there are different sections for each feature set, including one for RCS. As spotted by 9to5Google, if you expand this list of RCS features and scroll to the bottom, you see a section on “Coming soon on iOS: Better messaging for all.” That’s no surprise: We’ve known Apple was adopting RCS since November. However, it’s the next line that brings the news: “Apple has announced it will be adopting RCS in the fall of 2024.”
Of course, this does not say a lot as it is “in the fall” which is anywhere over a couple of months, and Google has tried to embarrass Apple into making moves before. I suppose, though, there is the looming court case against Apple which is anyway keeping pressure on Apple. If it were not for the US court case, I would have guessed Apple may have pulled out after the EU had ruled Apple was not a dominant player in the market (although the EU case was looking more at interoperability with WhatsApp and others in Apple Messages).
Of course, with Apple actually including RCS now, they can probably argue that there is interoperability via RCS between their platform and Android too. It must be remembered that in many countries, like mine, SMS’s are paid for so are very expensive to use for any form of chatting, and the costs go up exponentially when you text an international number.
I personally have quite a few issues with interoperability with Apple:
- I still have AirTags from when I had an iPhone and I daily get the audio beeps warning me the AirTags are not connected (I use an Android phone and alternate between an iPad and an Android tablet)
- I can’t wait to sell my AirTags and get the new one’s Google was working on that will interoperate with Apple, but supposedly Apple has been delaying building in that support into their devices (which Google already built into Android for AirTags in 2023)
- Because I was on Apple Messages and my iPad still sometimes connects, I find a message on my iPad that arrived a week ago which I had not seen (I had Beeper which was solving this problem)
Apple is not at all dominant outside the USA, but it makes interacting with Apple users quite a pain, as Apple has gone out of their way to try to keep their users inside the walled garden.
See https://lifehacker.com/tech/google-just-revealed-when-apple-will-officially-adopt-rcs
#technology #RCS #Apple #interoperability
Remember, RCS is replacing text SMS and Text SMS has not only absolutely zero encryption of any sort, it also has copies retained by every mobile service provider in terms of their license T&C’s. You need to see RCS as an upgrade of text SMS, and not really a replacement for WhatsApp (yet).
Yeah, but Google’s “Messages” app—which is the only one with RCS support—sends truncated hashes of all of your messages to their servers.
https://www.androidpolice.com/google-messages-phone-app-text-messages-call-logs-google/
Not the only one, Samsung also their Messages app with RCS built in, and Apple is adding soon. The one-to-one messages are E2EE, and I understand groups are/were to be E2EE. We should be seeing more apps building it in as I’ve been asking Truecaller to do, as I have to pay for every SMS in Truecaller.
E2EE doesn’t make a lick of difference to my point if Google is sending themselves your messages before they encrypt them.
It’s the only one on non-Samsung Android phones, which is a ton of phones including mine.
One to one messages are fully E2EE so are not decrypted on the server side. It was only groups that was still getting E2EE rolled out. I agree tho as an open standard for adoption, it should not only have a server at Google. I don’t think the mobile carriers like that either.
Yes, but I was talking about capturing the message contents before encrypting it on your phone. They control the software, so they can do whatever they want. You’re still typing clear trext into an app, and they can send themselves a copy before encrypting it for the recipient.
Yes I was too, that is the client end-point that everyone is after now, and where Meta was trying to spy on Snapchat, and where State Actors get into encrypted data before it gets encrypted. It’s the known weak point, as you read everything unencrypted. But it also comes down to who would want to read your data and why. Are they legally empowered/prevented from doing so, do they sell data to data brokers, etc.
So not just non-reversable hashes, but truncated non-reversable hashes? So they are even more non-reversable? I think I’m ok with that.
Why would you be OK with that? You do know hashes can be brute forced to determine the original message, right? Truncating a hash doesn’t really change anything. It just increased a chance of a hash collision.
In additon, they trivial to figure out very common messages. They can use that to figure out your relationship between people. If you, for instance, reply to a question with just “weed”. Or if you asked “DTF?” Or any other short message. They know what you said. For somewhat longer messages, they could brute force the contents. Very few intelligible English sentences would hash to the same value, even when truncated.
It’s spyware and we should not be OK with that.
You are thinking about this hash part way too much. Why would they bother brute forcing the hash when the message goes through their system anyway? If they wanted to know what you said, they could just read and store the message directly.
Yes, but they can’t do that in bulk and have people be OK with it. When it’s hashed, they can say, “we can’t read these” and have it be half true.