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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

#231

Post by lxgr »

happymellon wrote: post #111
lxgr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It definitely sounds like a technical one if you can't make two groups, one for banter and one for serious talk so you can mute banter when it's not appropriate. How are other people supposed to know that it's not okay for you right now because you are at dinner?

Oh, that for sure. That seems like the obvious solution I'd pick on Signal or WhatsApp, and if Apple Messages doesn't support it, it's yet another infuriating example of their "we know best" attitude.

I like Apple hardware, but try to avoid its first party apps as much as possible due to that.

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

#233

Post by ExoticPearTree »

madeofpalk wrote: post #206
bla3 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really shows how apple is only into privacy when it's self-serving.

How does it show that? Blue bubbles don't mean privacy, and green bubbles don't mean insecure. I would presume encrypted RCS would satisfy privacy, and would remain green to indicate it doesn't support iMessage-specific features.

iMessage is encrypted. Blue means the “SMS” was sent over iMessage and it is secure. Green means it was sent as a normal SMS. This is super helpful for non-technical people that want privacy.

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

#234

Post by ExoticPearTree »

bolognafairy wrote: post #210
bla3 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really shows how apple is only into privacy when it's self-serving.

As another commenter said: how? show your working? You are at the very least letting this hypothetical scenario (that another random HN commenter posed) feed into your “damn Apple!” feedback loop. Blue bubbles says nothing about privacy. It tells users which service is being used. It informs them about what to expect. Chill.

> Blue bubbles says nothing about privacy.

iMessage is encrypted, so it is pretty private. Am I missing something?

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

#235

Post by lxgr »

acdha wrote: post #222
lxgr wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage has nothing to do with RCS, though. I'm also curious how key exchanges will work across operating systems on the latter.

Yes, but it seems unlikely that they wouldn’t reuse as much of that infrastructure as possible to perform the same function for the same users.

Their infrastructure is iMessage protocol specific, though, and that's incompatible with whatever Google does for RCS.

So either somebody has to build some new service bridging the gap, or RCS encryption is "serverless" in the way that e.g. OTR was, but unlike Signal (which needs explicit server support for managing pre-keys to bootstrap new connections while the recipient is offline, for example).

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

#236

Post by lxgr »

scarface_74 wrote: post #230
lxgr wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually a “shared cost” model, not really “called party pays”, as far as I know. And as far as I understand, this is all downstream of US mobile numbers not having a dedicated prefix identifying them. They have region-specific area codes just like landlines to which calls are physically routed, and from there it’s routed onwards to wherever the mobile phone might be. That could well be a long-distance leg of wh…

US carriers haven’t charged for long distance calls for decades at least for domestic calls. Besides with number portability, you can keep your same mobile number when you change carriers no matter what the original region was. I’ve had my same number for over 20 years and have changed carriers 5 times.

They're largely not charging end users for it anymore because the cost is just too low these days, true, but as I understand that's still how the pricing model evolved.

> you can keep your same mobile number when you change carriers no matter what the original region was

Yes, but only because all carriers have physical or at least logical/rented infrastructure in effectively all "rate centers" [1]. The call still goes to whatever rate center your number corresponds to (barring other agreements, I assume, e.g. the originating and terminating carrier having VoIP interconnectivity).

That's very different in countries that have dedicated prefixes for mobile numbers: The originating carrier can immediately detect the target network (instead of target region) from the prefix and route the call to the nearest interconnection point between the two.

This means that the terminating carrier usually carries the traffic for the longest geographic stretch, something for which they usually/historically got to bill the originating carrier via interconnection fees. Today, these fees are either gone or nominal/heavily regulated, but the more efficient routing is still a factor for reliability.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_center

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

#237

Post by lxgr »

scarface_74 wrote: post #229
jeroenhd wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the distinction that separated the US from the rest of the world is that US carriers charged the recipient of a message, while the rest of the world charged the sender. I don't know if that's true for evrryer carrier or if it's still true today, but it made a major difference. It's also the reason apps threaten you with fees ("this service may cost you money") when all they do is send a verification SMS. Re…

No one pays extra for SMS - sender or receiver. I’m not aware of any carrier in the US that charges.

Explicit charges are very rare these days, but there are at least still metered plans that count both incoming and outgoing texts against a monthly maximum.

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

#238

Post by permo-w »

MBCook wrote: post #44
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.

Yep. They’re never going away. Blue = iMessage Green = Other It doesn’t matter if both support 100% identical feature sets, it’s gonna stay like that.

do you have evidence for this?

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

#239

Post by lxgr »

devilbunny wrote: post #124
lxgr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> keep the channel clear, or contact me otherwise I realize that I live in an unusual life vis-a-vis most HN readers. I do not work in tech, and I never have. I'm a physician: specifically, an anesthesiologist. I have always enjoyed tech, and I'm certainly miles ahead of most of my colleagues on that. But. Remote work is not possible. Relocating involves getting a new license to practice medicine (3-8 months), gettin…

I get not being able to ignore calls (although that sounds like hell too, given how common spam calls are to US numbers), but it would really not be possible for people to agree to call you if they urgently need something?

Not doubting your description of your situation, and it does sound extremely stressful.

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

#240

Post by lxgr »

jeroenhd wrote: post #184
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),…

RCS is a GSMA standard, like VoLTE and SMS messages. Of course it's going to use telecoms features as unique identifiers, that's what it was designed to do. While I agree that tying everying to a phone number is far from optimal, it's the status quo in messenger land. Only tech nerds use services like XMPP and Matrix, the rest all use either chat apps that tie you to a phone number or just text directly. RCS is there…

> it's the status quo in messenger land

Yes, and it's incredibly frustrating that we couldn't avoid ending up here. Maybe it was inevitable, but I still find it very sad.

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