Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 270 posts

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

#51

Post by wkat4242 »

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…

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)

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

#52

Post by stephen_g »

g-b-r wrote: post #39

This is a risky clause: > R5-32-5 An RCS client having E2EE enabled shall implement techniques to detect suspicious messages or conversations.

Potentially, but it’s fine as long as it’s done on the device and only notifies the user. Like ‘This might be spam, are you sure you want to view it’ or ‘This message might contain nudity’ if people care about enabling that kind of filter.

As long as it never will call out to any external server it doesn’t break the security.

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

#53

Post by scarface_74 »

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…

Yes. Not everyone is going to install Signal (which isn’t end to end encrypted btw), everyone has a cell phone that can support either iMessage/RCS/MMS/SMS and when you send a message to someone else’s number, you have graceful (sic) degradation.

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

#54

Post by scarface_74 »

codedokode wrote: post #11

It is good that commercial messengers forced GSM association to finally create E2EE standards. The reason why telcos want you to use RCS becomes obvious if you calculate how much 1Gb of data costs if sent as SMS (I guess that one could buy a car with this money).

Does any carrier still charge for SMS messages?

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

#55

Post by o11c »

wkat4242 wrote: post #51
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…

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)

I have a very minimal Android phone with no Google account ever added/used on the device, and it says my chats with other Android users are using RCS ...

The phone number is associated in the other direction though (way back when Google didn't be evil and GMail required invites, I dared to trust them with it, I forget for what).

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

#57

Post by ocdtrekkie »

MBCook wrote: post #48
tengbretson wrote: post #21

Still waiting on a non-Google implementation of this so-called standard.

I think Google‘s was something different. This is an actual standard that Apple is committing to implement. I was under the impression Google’s encryption was just their own layer thing they added on top it was not actually standardized. When people asked last year about why Apple wasn’t implementing encrypted RCS I think they even said that they wanted to wait for a standard.

So an important context here is the server side implementation of RCS is Google's at every major carrier. Google bought the carrier-side provider of RCS services, Jibe, and so the entire RCS stack is still basically just Google Chat with an "it's a standard" label on it.

https://9to5google.com/2024/02/01/verizon-rcs-google-jibe/

Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile all use Google's RCS implementation, the only way to not send Google your messages in the US is to own an iPhone and disable RCS.

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

#58

Post by g-b-r »

stephen_g wrote: post #52
g-b-r wrote: post #39

This is a risky clause: > R5-32-5 An RCS client having E2EE enabled shall implement techniques to detect suspicious messages or conversations.

Potentially, but it’s fine as long as it’s done on the device and only notifies the user . Like ‘This might be spam, are you sure you want to view it’ or ‘This message might contain nudity’ if people care about enabling that kind of filter. As long as it never will call out to any external server it doesn’t break the security.

Potentially indeed, that's why I said "risky".

It

- depends on how the clients want to implement it (it's not unthinkable that some might choose a "more effective" remote scanning)

- it makes it a lot harder to make a client, although Bayesian filters should be enough

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

#59

Post by DownrightNifty »

jeroenhd wrote: post #30
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…

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...

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

#60

Post by h0l0cube »

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.

At least the false pretence would vanish if both support 100%
Post reply on HN