Messages to other Messages users is encrypted though, correct? Just those dang green bubble people…
“Apple iMessages, which appear blue between iPhone users, and Google Messages, sent between Android users, are also fully encrypted using Signal’s protocol.
However, texts sent from an iPhone to an Android and vice versa are not fully encrypted.”
Signal is fully end to end encrypted for texts & calls. The only metadata they collect is account creation data and the last time an account connected to the Signal service, even push notifications are encrypted and unreadable by Apple & Google. It’s an amazingly well thought out and engineered service run by a nonprofit foundation. (Yes, I’m a fan.)
Maybe I’ll finally have more than 3 people on there! that’s been the only thing blocking me
+1
That’s the real issue with a lot of this stuff. You can have all of the encrypted apps, but unless you are willing to be the “jerk” in your family that insists everybody else download the encrypted messaging apps to communicate with you, you are likely to get a lot of communications – and have to send a lot of communications – in whatever platform other people prefer.
The GSMA came up with RCS 16 years ago. One solution would be for Apple to implement encrypted RCS. Facebook Messenger is the most popular app in the US and WhatsApp is #1 in the world.
Adding encrypted RCS might actually help iMessage reach more users.
Yup, my wife & I did this with our respective families by saying the equivalent of, “you can find us here or email us” and sticking to it. It worked, despite some grumbling by a couple of family members.
Of course that strategy may not work for everyone’s family dynamics.
YMMV
I’ve stabilized on about a handful of regular correspondents who use Signal with me. About the same number use iMessage. Most of the rest are either too old it would be irresponsible to ignore their SMS since they aren’t meaning to not use encrypted messaging, or group texts that I have little control over. It’d be neat if this announcement pushed people off of SMS but I doubt much will happen.
It’d also be neat if this announcement pushed banks and vendors, etc. from using SMS for 2FA.
That’d be nice. I’m hopeful with Apple having decent TOTP management, we’re closer to banks considering it to be something any of their customers could use. Google Authenticator doesn’t come preinstalled on most Android phones yet. Neither do enough work to make TOTP easy to understand.
I’m still debating whether this is where Passkey’s slot in the world is going to be.
True, but I refuse to use either and have convinced most of my family as well. Terms of service require allowing Meta to scrape virtually all data in your phone - pictures, contacts, location, apps. Just no.
I’m working on my family to use Signal. Wish me luck; it’s a hard sell. Most of us are on iPhones, so Apple Messages is OK when not communicating with Android users.
Neither do I. I’ve never used any Facebook software or service. It looked sketchy to me on day one. Signal is the only secure app I use, other than iMessage. If it was good enough for Snowden . . .
I mentioned the other apps because, IMO, there is a good reason for Apple to include encrypted RCS so we can communicate with the 70% of the world that uses android.
That article didn’t explain it, but I thought RCS was still going to be green bubbles? A search seems to say as much, but everything is from June or 2023.
“To put it simply, blue is secure and green is not. It doesn’t matter if it’s old school SMS green or new kid on the block RCS green. Blue is still secure and green is still not.”
The way I read this, once Apple implements encrypted RCS everyone will be a blue bubble. But Apple appears to once again be “dragging their feet”.
So green is not going away, despite the article’s headline, correct?
Correct, AFAIK. Green will just mean not encrypted. But we will finally be able set Signal, WhatsApp, etc. as our default message app.
There have been times when I couldn’t communicate because the available bandwidth was practically nonexistent, and iMessage refused to switch to SMS. Only android users could get out using SMS.