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Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

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Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#31

Post by kbenson »

dmix wrote: post #6
atonse wrote: post #4

Can anyone confirm the biggest issue (in my opinion) with RCS? It's not end-to-end encrypted. Update: Confirmed it myself [1]. End-to-end encryption is not even an option. Which is perfect for the data addicts like Google. But honestly I would never ever recommend this as an avenue for people to use over something like WhatsApp. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20964477/googles-rcs-cha...

Indeed, this seems to be needlessly kicking life back into SMS when it was already being replaced by better systems that respect privacy. Of course the decentralized nature of SMS is a good benefit but given how most telecoms are oligopolies disinterested in customers concerns about privacy (and plenty of other things like customer service) it pretty much defeats the value in it.

It's a phone based messaging medium. If you have a phone number, you can send a message. That's not nothing. I know the phone numbers of far more people than I know the name of their apple account, or google account, or facebook account, or whatever.

The general answer to that is to exchange account information, but the easiest way to do that is through SMS... and here we are. Upgrading SMS so it's better. It's not perfect, but I'm happy for any advances they can make to it.

And as for why it's not encrypted end-to-end, the spec started back in 2008. That wasn't even on most people's radar back then. It's possible once we see some actual uptake of the protocol, we might see some more movement towards adding features (continuously adding features before something is in use is just a good way to make sure it never actually makes it into use).

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#33

Post by bnjms »

curt15 wrote: post #24
benguild wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is: most people won’t care or know the difference. This is going to strong arm things away from the messaging app market and iMessage.

Why can't Apple push back and inform people of the difference through advertising?

They don’t have to. As long as they keep the color differences between iMessage and non encrypted messages people will learn. Everyone smokes or does something technically illegal. They just have to be told that the middle men archive all text messages.

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#34

Post by hsnewman »

atonse wrote: post #4

Can anyone confirm the biggest issue (in my opinion) with RCS? It's not end-to-end encrypted. Update: Confirmed it myself [1]. End-to-end encryption is not even an option. Which is perfect for the data addicts like Google. But honestly I would never ever recommend this as an avenue for people to use over something like WhatsApp. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20964477/googles-rcs-cha...

Why in late 2019 would any company come up with a communication mechanism which doesn't use encryption?

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#36

Post by notyourday »

pathartl wrote: post #15
jlgaddis wrote: post #11

Is this basically an Android-only version of iMessages?

No, it's an industry agreed standard of an implementation similar to iMessage without end to end encryption. It was created by many of the carriers as an upgrade to SMS.

Without Apple supporting it this is not a messaging standard, rather it is another Google's fumble at creating a messaging app.

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#37

Post by otachack »

Mobius01 wrote: post #27
wlesieutre wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an industry standard, but if Apple doesn't implement it in iOS then it's only useable from one Android device to another. That effectively makes it into crappy iMessage for Android. Only works within one OS ecosystem, but it's unencrypted, managed by your carrier, and limited to the one cellular device itself instead of also working directly on your wifi-connected tablet and computer. It would be nice of Apple t…

I don’t see Apple supporting this if end-to-end encryption isn’t in place, they’ve been more and more positioning privacy as a competitive advantage for their services.

Apple already supports SMS to their Messages app. Those communication threads fall back to SMS rather than their proprietary protocol, I imagine. RCS equipped message apps will probably fall back to regular SMS when sending to Apple Messages equipped phones, maybe?

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#38

Post by justAnotherNET »

hsnewman wrote: post #34
atonse wrote: post #4

Can anyone confirm the biggest issue (in my opinion) with RCS? It's not end-to-end encrypted. Update: Confirmed it myself [1]. End-to-end encryption is not even an option. Which is perfect for the data addicts like Google. But honestly I would never ever recommend this as an avenue for people to use over something like WhatsApp. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20964477/googles-rcs-cha...

Why in late 2019 would any company come up with a communication mechanism which doesn't use encryption?

Consider the odds that no one at an engineering meeting brought this up.

If we assume someone did (which is a safe assumption), now imagine what kind of company culture would reject something as obviously desirable to the user as E2E.

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#39

Post by nkellenicki »

A couple of weeks ago AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile announced that they had started working on their cross-provider RCS implementation - https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/24/20931202/us-carriers-rcs...

Does Google doing this essentially mean they've gotten sick of waiting for the carriers and decided to bypass them entirely? If so, the carriers can't be happy about that.

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#40

Post by toast0 »

hsnewman wrote: post #34
atonse wrote: post #4

Can anyone confirm the biggest issue (in my opinion) with RCS? It's not end-to-end encrypted. Update: Confirmed it myself [1]. End-to-end encryption is not even an option. Which is perfect for the data addicts like Google. But honestly I would never ever recommend this as an avenue for people to use over something like WhatsApp. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20964477/googles-rcs-cha...

Why in late 2019 would any company come up with a communication mechanism which doesn't use encryption?

This is a GSMA developed standard that was started in 2007. It wasn't an unusual choice then.

If they tried to add it now, it would push wide adoption even further back.

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