Samsung has released a new video in support of Google’s #GetTheMessage campaign which calls for Apple to adopt RCS or “Rich Communication Services,” the cross-platform protocol pitched as a successor to SMS that adopts many of the features found in modern messaging apps… like Apple’s own iMessage.
I’ve just been googling a bit because I haven’t read about RCS in a while, but I remember thinking then that the show stopping thing is that it’s not E2E, and Apple would be dumb to move to since iMessage is. It seems now that E2E is supported but requires clients to support it, which tbh seems the worst of all worlds. At least today I know blue = encrypted, green = not encrypted. If it’s optional and we end up in a “is this encrypted? we’ll see ¯\(ツ)/¯” type of world that is honestly terrible. I also don’t know how great it would be if you have to rely on the client vendor to accurately report encryption status because there are some I trust, and especially when it comes to “just download whatever RCS client you want” I absolutely would not trust that.
iMessage is only E2E encrypted if both users have iCloud disabled or have gone into their iCloud settings and enabled “Advanced Data Protection”
Fair point. It looks more specifically they’re not if you enable “messages in iCloud” or iCloud backup with messages.
“Enable” is incorrect, and why I was warning you about it. It’s on by default, so you need to “disable” it if you want E2E encryption
A blue bubble is unlikely to mean a message is E2E encrypted. That may not matter for your threat model, but Apple almost certainly has the decryption keys for you messages
So essentially they’re just as bad as RCS. Both hamstrung by the limitations of their encryptions interoperability
