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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

#41

Post by nine_k »

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?

I suppose this is a rhetorical question?

* With a free service, the data is the asset which the company obtains by offering the service.

* With whatever service, the company may receive a subpoena, an NSL, etc. It's easier to comply when you have the data than to prove that you can't comply because you only transfer the encrypted packets, and have no way to bug the client devices, too.

If you want end-to-end encryption, run your own Signal server, or something, and hope that you're flying below radars.

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

#42

Post by umeshunni »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #21
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has shown no interest in supporting RCS, because the features it adds are basically akin to iMessage... which iPhones already have.

And RCS has no support for E2E encryption, it would be actually a downgrade from iMessage.

Not for iOS users sending messages to Android users.

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

#43

Post by telcodud »

kbenson wrote: post #31
dmix wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Knowing someone's phone number means you can reach them on WhatsApp. At least, that's true for 2B (out of 5B) of phone numbers, which is likely to be 1,000 times the number of RCS users.

The second and most important advantage of WhatsApp is that you don't have to maintain an address book anymore. People change phone numbers and the new number is automatically reflected in WhatsApp. It's quite likely that address books on phones are outdated and thus stale.

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

#44

Post by wyldfire »

nine_k wrote: post #41
hsnewman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I suppose this is a rhetorical question? * With a free service, the data is the asset which the company obtains by offering the service. * With whatever service, the company may receive a subpoena, an NSL, etc. It's easier to comply when you have the data than to prove that you can't comply because you only transfer the encrypted packets, and have no way to bug the client devices, too. If you want end-to-end encrypti…

> With a free service, the data is the asset which the company obtains by offering the service.

RCS competes with iMessage and WhatsApp, which are both "free" services (IIRC WhatsApp business model is paid commercial messaging customers and iMessage business model is paid devices). Both of those offer encryption features.

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

#45

Post by ocdtrekkie »

nkellenicki wrote: post #39

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.

Google was trying to market Jibe as a service carriers could pay for to handle their RCS messaging for them. When carriers announced CCMI, they made it clear they weren't interested in paying for Jibe. https://jibe.google.com/jibe-platform/

Clearly, Google wants the data badly enough to provide said messaging services for free, and doesn't want carriers to keep the data to themselves. But they were hoping carriers would pay them and that they'd also get the data.

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

#46

Post by AcerbicZero »

There was a time when I really thought Google was going to shake things up. Nexus Phones, Google Fiber, Google Fi, etc all sounded awesome. I bought a Nexus 5, switched to Fi, went through the super fun process of mixing around my google voice numbers, (breaking all kinds of stuff) but eventually I was mostly setup and functional. I'd lost some core parts of gVoice, but I figured it was just a matter of time before it was back up to a similar level.

Having Hangouts as a full featured SMS/Voice/MMS replacement, which also let you do all of those things from your computer was an awesome experience. GV features like Spam filter wasn't supported with Fi, and just accessing your GV account with a Fi subscription on your google account was difficult.

Then they split SMS/Hangouts (although Fi users were somewhat grandfathered in), which broke basically every text convo I had going on, and made it more difficult to text Hangout friends compared with SMS only friends. Then they rolled back the gVoice/Fi plans, and made it clear that Hangouts was going away, and gVoice wasn't going to be an option. Then the Nexus phones started to get worse instead of better. The 6P was mediocre at best, and "Stock" Android was starting to make compromises, while somehow getting worse. The Pixels have continued this trend of decline, Hangouts can't really even send Gifs anymore (size limit of like, 3mb or something) Fi has made almost no progress, and when Hangouts goes away I'll be retiring the last of my Android devices.

Kind of a long rant, but my point is I don't trust google to do anything competent in this space, and even if they did, I wouldn't trust them not to fuck it up 6 months later.

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

#47

Post by beisner »

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...

It's almost certainly the carriers imposing this restriction. The reason these features took so long is because, as they did for SMS, every single carrier across the world has to get on board with this. , so I'm sure that's the reason it's not encrypted. The Messages app might be a Google product, but the underlying transport has to be implemented by carriers, and I'm sure there are many, many carriers who aren't interested in encrypting the messages that are carried across their networks (either because they don't have the technical competency, they want the data for themselves, or they have to comply with local law enforcement regulations about texting).

This is not to excuse the lack of encryption, but the finger should probably be pointed more at carriers (and maybe OEMs) than at Google.

One question I have is whether Google-account to Google-account messages will be encrypted, like how Apple does it with their iMessage/SMS boundary within the same app...

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

#48

Post by dmead »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #46

There was a time when I really thought Google was going to shake things up. Nexus Phones, Google Fiber, Google Fi, etc all sounded awesome. I bought a Nexus 5, switched to Fi, went through the super fun process of mixing around my google voice numbers, (breaking all kinds of stuff) but eventually I was mostly setup and functional. I'd lost some core parts of gVoice, but I figured it was just a matter of time before i…

I guess you're on apple stuff then? my nexus 6 just broke and im on an old 5x thats barely funtional. the pixels all look atrocious with no end in sight.

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

#49

Post by kbenson »

telcodud wrote: post #43
kbenson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Knowing someone's phone number means you can reach them on WhatsApp. At least, that's true for 2B (out of 5B) of phone numbers, which is likely to be 1,000 times the number of RCS users. The second and most important advantage of WhatsApp is that you don't have to maintain an address book anymore. People change phone numbers and the new number is automatically reflected in WhatsApp. It's quite likely that address boo…

> Knowing someone's phone number means you can reach them on WhatsApp

...that would be super useful if I had WhatsApp installed. It also means that WhatsApp is tracking the phone number of all the people and doing selective (assuming only your friends can see it) publishing of it. I guess that's usually okay, but it also kinda wierds me out that it leaks info that way.

My phone number is already managed by me, I've given it to the people I want to have it. This really just limits any WhatsApp messaging I would to to entities that I want to have my phone number. It's probably much easier to block WhatsApp accounts (and attempted messages) than calls (phone calls which are synchronous communication have a much higher urgency to me than some random phone ding that's async).

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

#50

Post by kbenson »

dmix wrote: post #22
pathartl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say needlessly. There's still something to be said for basic technologies that all devices can support.

Sure, agreed it's useful as a backbone sort of system like phones. Which will always be the biggest fundamental flaw with something like Signal or WhatsApp (the need for centralized servers, the requirement to install 3rd party software). There may be a role for these telecom services to exist perpetually as a backup services, while everyone still uses apps as their primary communication method. But RCS seems to be t…

> But RCS seems to be trying to bring SMS to parity with messaging apps supporting emoticons and media-heavy content

I think it's more that RCS is attempting to bring SMS into the 21st century, if barely. Those aren't exactly amazing features, they're the lowest bar for entry you could meet for a messaging app in 2010. 2019 has a much higher bar, as everyone here is noting.

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