Viewing profile — schvenk

Online privacy is on a lot of minds these days. But what’s actually worth worrying about? And how can we help non-technical folks navigate these questions? Let's start with persona…

AI product-design principle #1: Keep the user in the driver’s seat. Users need a sense of control, and want confidence that your product is working for them rather than calling the…

In recent weeks, Apple has taken heavy criticism for its failures around Apple Intelligence. While those missteps might seem like a typical strategic blunder, it could reflect a fu…

..and other things that, to be fair, I didn't fully spell out in the article. I suppose I could have said "periodically confuses your friends" because a lot of it has to do with sw…

To be fair, when I said "millions of others worldwide" I was making a (pretty safe) assumption. As the default messaging service on every phone, and with literally billions of phon…

The thing with email is it's only encrypted (even in transit) sometimes. So it kinda has the same issue as iMessage. If you're a Gmail user using Gmail's web app to email another G…

To clarify: I'm not suggesting you trust Telegram more than mobile providers--if SMS were encrypted in transit I'd have a much weaker case against it. But the point is, with Telegr…

iMessage is indeed more secure than Telegram. Dunno vs. WhatsApp, but unlike WhatsApp it has a central message archive (and as of a few weeks ago, you can end-to-end encrypt that, …

I didn't talk much about Google Chat in the article, but I think it's a fine example of a non-E2EE messenger in the same bucket as Telegram, from a company that tends to demonstrat…

> Moreover, despite all of the hate, iMessage actually works great. That hasn't been my experience. Often it does. And then sometimes it doesn't. My sense is that when it doesn't, …

Yep. As you say, the vast majority of people have no problem with SMS. I wrote the article in the hopes of convincing at least a few more people to have a problem with it.

I take your point. It wasn't intentional in terms of hiding the truth; it was intentional in terms of opening with something strong and not too nuanced. I had hoped getting into th…

As far as I can tell, Google Messages defaults to E2EE when possible when RCS is enabled, but RCS is disabled by default. Which basically means 80% of users don't have it turned on…

I fully agree the best outcome here would be a cross-platform, E2EE standard supported as the default across a variety of platforms. (Where iMessage would be a great option if Appl…

Much as I would love an open standard to win here, their track record has not been great with respect to messaging. If someone (looking at you, Google) were to jump on board with o…

Although note that with SMS, you're consenting to multiple phone companies knowing your phone number, name, and definitely other information in the form of all your messages. Possi…

(Original author here) I agree with everything you said. SMS is popular for excellent reasons that are hard to overcome at this point. I wrote the article not because I expect it t…