cross-posted from: https://kbin.projectsegfau.lt/m/tech@kbin.social/t/26889
Google just announced that all RCS conversations in Messages are now fully end-to-end encrypted, even in group chats. RCS stands for Rich Communication Services and is replacing traditional text and picture messaging, providing you with more dynamic and secure features. With RCS enabled, you can share high-res photos and videos, see typing indicators for your…
Fun fact, a group I knew in uni made an end to end encryption program that sent messages through Google more than a decade ago and Google got really, really mad at them threatening to shut down all Google accounts associated with all IP addresses they used.
Guarantee it’s not fully E2E.
It’s E2E, E2E isn’t really something you can be sneaky about unless you roll your own encryption and then make claims about it totally being safe bro
They, however, run the app you are using to type everything, the keyboard you are using to type everything and the os you are using to type everything. If they want something, they don’t need to look at your in flight messages.
The trust doesn’t even have to be in the encryption, they could very well use the same signal protocol. They would only need a copy of the keys you are using and you wouldn’t even know… That’s the problem with closed source programs, there is no certainty that its not happening (and I’m not saying it is, I can’t prove it, obviously, but the doubt remains, we need to trust these companies not to screw us over and they don’t really have the best track record in that…)
As if you’re any more comfortable with open source software, actively vetting the code, building it yourself, running your own server.
For all you know, Signal keeps a copy of your keys, too. And happily decrypts everything you send and sells it to russian data brokers for re-sale to advertisers.
It’s E2E, E2E isn’t really something you can be sneaky about unless you roll your own encryption and then make claims about it totally being safe bro
With a closed source app? Of course you can. How is anyone supposed to know what keys you use for encryption? Doesn’t even need to be a remote one - just the key generation be reproducible by the developer.
Sent messages “through Google”? Like Chat? Email? That’s such an ambiguous statement.
E2EE has been a available approaching three years now. I’d imagine if they were lying and defrauding the population, someone would have found out by now. This announcement is just that it’s on by default for everyone.
It doesn’t matter if it’s E2E or not when Google can spy on you directly on the phones at either end.
Reminds me how much I hate Apple.
Thanks Google for making Android.
Now please turn the evil knob down a notch and go back being the awesome company you once were.
Edit: typo
Apple purposely will not integrate this to keep a walled garden around their ecosystem and make messaging between apole/Android a shit experience.
In a perfect world everyone would just adopt rcs, it’s better for consumers but Apple only gives a shit about branding/$$$.
The one thing that feels off to me about Google’s implementation is that it’s not vendor agnostic and all comms would need to go through Google’s servers to work. The E2EE bit is an entirely Google specific extension to RCS, for example. The last thing we need is another chromium situation in a different area.
If it wasn’t a Google specific extension, phone networks around the world would need to pick up the pace and adopt RCS, but also they’d need to keep up to date with the latest version of the standard to ensure the functionality is supported. Now, looking at phone networks’ previous track record, they’re really not going to implement it unless they’re forced to and they’ll do so at a real snails pace.
At this point I’d agree that Apple not adopting RCS is really not helpful here.
I feel the EU’s Digital Market Act that’s forcing messenger applications to be interoperable with each other is going to be a much more viable option towards that perfect world scenario. The IETF is even fleshing out a common protocol for it, MIMI with MLS.
Aside from the fact that Google finally implementing E2EE in RCS not having anything at all to do with Apple, I’m confused.
Apple developed a fully encrypted messaging system 16 years ago, 4 years later RCS was developed but wasn’t even adopted by all three major US carriers until 2 years ago (much more complicated than just this as they refused to work together on Universal Profile standards and Google has so ‘valiantly’ stepped in to do it without them), and Apple is the bad guy for not switching to a competitors standard that was (until now) less secure, uses googles back end services, is arguably less capable, has an extremely poor desktop access experience, is less intuitive to enable, and takes away a competitive advantage? All while other E2EE messaging apps have been available on both iOS and Android for years.
Why not push for google to adopt iMessage as a standard instead? Maybe google has been holding iMessage back for 16 years. Maybe Apple isn’t holding rcs back but carriers are. Or maybe it’s the GSMA. Or maybe it’s a larger systemic issue with capitalism. Or maybe it’s one of any number of other issues that makes it disadvantageous for Apple and Google to work together on this.
This article, cancerous as the site is on mobile, does a good job breaking down the issue and how it’s not as clear cut as folks here are trying to make it: https://www.androidpolice.com/google-rcs-messaging-feud-apple-imessage/
At the end of the day, y’all being angry at Apple about RCS sounds just a bit like simping for google and falling prey to their marketing campaign to try and win the messaging war. Im not really interested in experiencing another chromium situation but with messaging. Particularly when WhatsApp is king in the messaging space globally.
Doesn’t really explain what google enabling E2E on RCA has to do with Apple
Now, open up the RCS API to third party texting apps… Like you said you would many years ago
Using Signal since a few years. Don’t know anything about security but from a user perspective, I can highly recommend it. Takes some time converting your friends but after that it does its thing.
In my experience some friends are unconvertable, and at that point group chats with those friends just end up in the same place as before.
Yeah, that’s entirely possible; I have some friends unwilling to convert (or that I haven’t bothered with). I do however note an increase in use in Sweden, so I’m still hopeful. Best converter would of course be major screw up from WhatsApp etc. which may or may not happen, but then I’ll be ready to bang the drums again :)
I have some friends like that, but am currently in the process of making the switch over to signal from Snapchat. The key is once you have a critical mass of people in the group they switch over lmao
Also whenever you make a new gc, for example to plan something, you make it in signal and send them the invite link lol
To my knowledge, Signal is the only verifiably secure encrypted messaging app that’s market ready. Signal is fully open source, including its encryption algorithm which has been tested numerous times and even gotten government agencies like the FBI all butthurt that can’t break it or get a backdoor from the devs. I have a friend whose cryptography professor contributed to the project.
It was only in recent years that Signal upped their game enough with the user experience for me to start recommending it to friends and family. In 2013, when I first recall trying it out, Signal was more clunky and always wanted to be your default SMS app. I didn’t like that, because at the time they didn’t have a client to send messages from your computer.
Nowadays they have an desktop app that syncs with your phone, video calling, and even stories – which some people find weird but I’m all for non-Zuccubus owned private and secure alternatives to social media. I’m pretty sure anyone on Lemmy would love to pull more power away from these surveillance based ad companies and stop being data cows.
Tl;dr: Fuck the Zuck, keep promoting Signal, democratize the internet
Late reply, but my main sticking point with Matrix is that it isn’t just an app you can tell your non-tech savvy friends to download. I like the decentralization, but most people don’t care and want something easy to understand and use
But that doesn’t help with sms or rcs. I wish there was an rcs client that was not made by Google
As far as I know Google doesn’t allow third party apps to plug into RCS.
This is why them bashing Apple for this particular issue always seemed hypocritical to me, they want this to be their own closed ecosystem, with Apple being the exception because they have enough clout to actually go it alone or even take users away from Android.
Ideally you’d have apps like Signal plugging into the same end-to-end encryption for interoperability, but Google won’t allow that because they just want people to use Google Messages for RCS, and nothing else.
I’ll be honest, the UX/UI is kinda my one big gripe with it. It feels so amateurish. More so because the desktop app is very clearly just a website that requires me to run a Chromium to display it, which makes it look pretty bad, more so side-by-side with Unigram, a pretty damn impressive Telegram app.
But even the Android app barely checks the bare-minimum. Yeah it’s a messenger. Feels kinda laggy compared to Telegram and Messages, lacks any cool animations of neat UI design, lacks cool themes, nothing really. Now of course messengers don’t need any of that, but it just shows to highlight that it isn’t exactly a stellar product except in its austerity, and if it were about that I’d expect it to run significantly better and with less resource hunger than it does on either mobile or desktop.
Of course, it’s still a really good app, just the UX/UI is exactly the one thing I wouldn’t recommend it for. 😅
I see your point. I like that the UI is quite simple, reminds me of the UI in iMessage. I was choosing between telegram and signal but mostly went with signal due to positive things I read online, in addition to being recommended on Privacytools.io which felt good.
Do NOT use PrivacyTools. This site was good resource before 2020 but then main developer disappeared for some time and returned with site which sells recommendations on products for money. Weird recommendations popped out. Just use Privacy Guides. Basically all biggest contributors moved on there. You can read more about this story in their FAQ 🙂
Kinda wary to switch in case it turns up in the Google Graveyard.
