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Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

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Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#91

Post by MBCook »

snypher wrote: post #66
jandrewrogers wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who they'd happily supply with details to get rid of the green bubble problem I would be surprised if this eliminates green bubbles. iMessage supports many features unavailable over RCS on Android devices. These would still be disabled and Apple needs a way to indicate a degraded feature set to iMessage users.

Just please stop sending the text that reads as follows, it totally destroys group chats and the amount of information conveyed in a react doesn't require quoting back the entire message, eg Liked "I would be surprised if this eliminates green bubbles. iMessage supports many features unavailable over RCS on Android devices. These would still be disabled and Apple needs a way to indicate a degraded feature set to iMes…

I thought Android released an update last year to automatically interpret those as display them as reactions.

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#92

Post by MBCook »

lxgr wrote: post #87
ezfe wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far more than "slightly better." It supports full resolution content, longer messages, and reactions/interactions. For most people it's indistinguishable from iMessage/etc. Do you really think that phone numbers aren't already a ubiquitous identifier? That is done. Nothing you're saying is changing because of RCS.

Yes, it's already largely done, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea, so why cheer moving into the same bad direction just because there's now finally a baseline of security? It's also anything but indistinguishable from iMessage. I can use iMessage on any number of devices without my phone having to be turned on, having the SIM with my number on it inserted, and being connected to the Internet (not always a give…

You’d rather we turn everything over to Facebook/Meta?

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#93

Post by devilbunny »

snypher wrote: post #66
jandrewrogers wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who they'd happily supply with details to get rid of the green bubble problem I would be surprised if this eliminates green bubbles. iMessage supports many features unavailable over RCS on Android devices. These would still be disabled and Apple needs a way to indicate a degraded feature set to iMessage users.

Just please stop sending the text that reads as follows, it totally destroys group chats and the amount of information conveyed in a react doesn't require quoting back the entire message, eg Liked "I would be surprised if this eliminates green bubbles. iMessage supports many features unavailable over RCS on Android devices. These would still be disabled and Apple needs a way to indicate a degraded feature set to iMes…

I have never seen a reaction that helped. "OK" is short, it's in plain text, and it works easily. I don't need your thumbs up. Or your like. You want to emoji, go ahead, but I'm getting older and I can't zoom in on them without blowing up general text to the same size. With more complex emoji I have to screenshot the text and then pull up the image to zoom on it to even tell what it is.

I'd silence the conversation, except that iMessage won't let you have two identical groups with exactly the same members. So both humorous and serious stuff goes into the same group chat, and it's often very time-sensitive if serious. Then three or four people start joking around, reacting to each other, and suddenly while I'm at dinner (or, my favorite, one hour into a three-hour drive) my phone or watch is going off every twenty seconds for five minutes. I can't ignore them, because one of those dings might be from someone else about something that needs an answer right now. I can't risk forgetting to turn notifications back on.

When I still used an Android phone, the max-ten-people SMS rule meant that I was missing important business information - like, for example, I found out that our secretary had cancer when she asked me for restaurant recommendations near MD Anderson Cancer Clinic in Houston. Never occurred to anyone else that I had gotten none of that.

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#94

Post by DownrightNifty »

DownrightNifty wrote: post #59
jeroenhd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The encryption is based on MLS: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9420.html I don't think Google wanted to gatekeep their E2EE implementation. They have some generic documentation about how it works: https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf The thing about RCS is that no messengers seem to care at all about implementing RCS themselves. Part of that is probably because depending on the carrier, RCS ma…

> many developers are waiting for Google to add RCS to the same API that SMS/MMS already exposes because they don't want to implement RCS themselves. Is that a planned feature? It's frustrating that third party messaging apps don't work with RCS. I hope we don't have to get the EU involved here...

Extra context I forgot to provide:

> RCS may require access to certain SIM card information, which only pre-installed apps can do

> because they don't want to implement RCS themselves.

Sounds like they can't implement RCS themselves even if they wanted to, not simply that Google doesn't provide an open source implementation? (Referring to app developers here, not custom ROM devs.)

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#95

Post by lxgr »

devilbunny wrote: post #93
snypher wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just please stop sending the text that reads as follows, it totally destroys group chats and the amount of information conveyed in a react doesn't require quoting back the entire message, eg Liked "I would be surprised if this eliminates green bubbles. iMessage supports many features unavailable over RCS on Android devices. These would still be disabled and Apple needs a way to indicate a degraded feature set to iMes…

I have never seen a reaction that helped. "OK" is short, it's in plain text, and it works easily. I don't need your thumbs up. Or your like. You want to emoji, go ahead, but I'm getting older and I can't zoom in on them without blowing up general text to the same size. With more complex emoji I have to screenshot the text and then pull up the image to zoom on it to even tell what it is. I'd silence the conversation,…

While acknowledging that you might not have any agency about this in your specific situation, this sounds more like a social/boundaries problem than a technical one.

If I were in a group chat with people both joking around and sending messages requiring urgent responses, I'd let them know to either cut the banter and keep the channel clear, or contact me otherwise if they need my urgent reaction. Letting people hold my attention hostage like that would drive me crazy.

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#96

Post by lxgr »

MBCook wrote: post #92
lxgr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's already largely done, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea, so why cheer moving into the same bad direction just because there's now finally a baseline of security? It's also anything but indistinguishable from iMessage. I can use iMessage on any number of devices without my phone having to be turned on, having the SIM with my number on it inserted, and being connected to the Internet (not always a give…

You’d rather we turn everything over to Facebook/Meta?

No, I'd rather we have an actually open, federated standard such as XMPP or Matrix, with a trusted directory service binding phone numbers (that one could be operated by phone networks) and email addresses or DNS domains to IM handles.

And if we can't figure that out, I consider Google and Meta equally bad gatekeepers of global B2C and P2P communication, and don't see why I should use the technically strictly inferior solution of the two.

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#97

Post by summm »

lxgr wrote: post #83

I really, really, really hope RCS doesn't make it as a standard. Now that it's end-to-end encrypted, it's slightly better than SMS, but it's still laughably incapable compared to decades-old protocols that support multiple devices, phone-number-independent identifiers, self-hosting, have open implementations and non-insane specifications etc. As it is, RCS is just Google Talk (Google runs most of the infrastructure),…

Even worse: it silently fails if the device does not run an unmodified anf certified Google Android OS. This means, it will not work on alternative OS and rooted devices

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#98

Post by lxgr »

slartibardfast0 wrote: post #49
alwayslikethis wrote: post #36

Unfortunately, RCS on Android requires google apps, so this isn't really a solution to anyone who doesn't want to be tracked by Google everywhere they go. I'm still a little confused as to what problem RCS is supposed to solve. It is just as centralized as any other chat app, and is a bit more invasive (often requiring device attestation). Is it really worth all this hassle just to not have to install, let's say, Sig…

this is so true for networks that don't implement RCS servers, not even Android - iOS interop present! one thing i would like to see happen is deprecating SMS message with Labels rather than numbers, phishing has got far far too common in my jurisdiction RCS + some sort of DNS validation like atproto of sender would go a long long way

> RCS + some sort of DNS validation like atproto of sender would go a long long way

Now this would be a messaging protocol I could get behind. Phone networks could even provide a phone number registry for people that insist on using that for whatever reason.

But there's absolutely no chance it'll happen – neither the telecommunications industry nor Google have any interest in making federation for others than "trusted partners" possible.

SMS is already a goldmine for carriers (thanks to the widespread use of SMS for OTPs and authentication), so why not make the next logical step and replace email for as many remaining B2C use cases as possible and collect some rent there as well?

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#99

Post by wkat4242 »

lxgr wrote: post #73
wkat4242 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also requires a Google account as far as I know. I have Google apps but no account signed in. And when I tap on the connect RCS option it asks me to sign in. Anyway iMessage (and iOS for that matter) is irrelevant where I live so I don't expect this to change anything. I'm not going to be on RCS. The main apps here are WhatsApp and Telegram (the latter more for groups)

It shouldn't. The only reason Google Messages sometimes asks for an account is to support remote access via messages.google.com without scanning a QR code, as far as I know. While it's largely openness/federation theater (Google runs most servers in the background, either on behalf of or instead of the mobile networks), they at least got that part right (as in conforming to the specification, not as in doing the long…

Ah ok strange. It is a Samsung phone though. Samsung has been forcing a Google login in more and more places unfortunately. I think they made some deal with them about the AI features. Just like they now promote OneDrive instead of their own cloud. Maybe that's why or I didn't understand the popup.

I don't really want it if I can't access my messages online anyway. The whole reason I love telegram and WhatsApp is that I don't need my phone when I'm on the computer (which is 90% of the time). But a Google account is out of the question.

Right now I even bridge WhatsApp and Telegram through matrix because I don't trust those either, though I don't think I trust any company less than Google. But I don't know if you can do that for RCS.

But tbh I'm not looking for any other chat app unless it's federated and I can run my own server. RCS is technically federated but limited to a group of big companies so that's pretty useless to me.

I think I'll just block it just like I do SMS. I turn off all the notifications for the relevant apps.

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#100

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

stephenr wrote: post #25
oneplane wrote: post #5

So essentially, it's not really an Apple thing, it's more that the universal RCS profile just didn't have encryption, and Google RCS was a non-standard extension that nobody else was allowed to use. The real news is the update to GSMA RCS, because without that, none of this matters. What I'm missing in the article is who's going to own the keys and why this is probably going to default to the telcos as if it's MMS. A…

I understand your point that the "news" part is that RCS standard now includes E2EE, rather than about Apple's support for said standard. But I don't think it's fair to suggest or imply that this development is unrelated to Apple either. RCS has been a thing for nearly a decade, and Google 's RCS backend has been doing non-standard E2EE for half that time. Within 8 months of Apple publicly announcing they would adopt…

It is worth noting that the E2EE system they are using (MLS/RFC9420) was only finalised as a standard as of mid 2023 and has had errata from the last few months. They basically added E2EE to RCS more or less as soon as the protocol they are using standardized with IETF.
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