GSM Affiliation is “excited” to carry Apple and Google nearer collectively, however encryption is nonetheless missing.
Android and iOS 18 customers can talk higher, now that iMessage helps Wealthy Communication Companies (RCS). However there’s nonetheless no end-to-end encryption (E2EE).
The physique charged with getting this sorted is the GSM Affiliation (GSMA). In as we speak’s SB Blogwatch, we take pleasure in some scrumptious alphabet soup.
Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits to your entertainment. To not point out: Maintain on, I’m groovin’.
No Extra Barf-Inexperienced Bubbles?
What’s the craic? Rajesh Pandey stories: Encrypted RCS texting between iPhone and Android coming soon
“You might need to attend some time”
With RCS assist, iOS 18 brings an enormous improve to the cross-device Android and iPhone messaging expertise. It allows customers of each gadgets to share high-quality media and luxuriate in options like learn receipts and typing indicators.
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Nevertheless, RCS chats between Android and iPhone lack end-to-end encryption (E2EE). … RCS (Wealthy Communication Companies) chats on Android assist E2EE. That is due to Google’s Jibe backend, which makes use of a Sign add-on to encrypt conversations. The present RCS Common Profile, as adopted by Apple, doesn’t assist [it].
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The GSM Affiliation is engaged on including interoperable end-to-end encryption. [But] there’s no timeline. … So, you might need to attend some time to take pleasure in a safer cross-platform messaging expertise.
I really feel like there’s some lacking context? Stephen Schenck obliges: There’s more work to be done
“Messaging Layer Safety”
This week has been a giant one for cellular connectivity: … With the discharge of iOS 18, Apple customers en masse are starting to speak through RCS, the trendy messaging customary intent on making a feature-rich, stage enjoying discipline for everybody. For Android customers who’ve lengthy felt like second-class residents within the eyes of their blue-bubble family and friends, that is one development that’s been a very long time coming (even when these inexperienced bubbles aren’t going anyplace).
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Our subsequent query is perhaps how this new assist might be prone to take form. We’ve already been following Google’s curiosity in Messaging Layer Safety (MLS) — a protocol that doesn’t simply assist E2EE between people, however can safe group chats simply as nicely. … Whereas we’d say that appears like a really stable risk for a way E2EE within the Common Profile might be realized, proper now neither the GSMA nor … Google is saying something very particular.
What’s it going to take? Tom Van Pelt, the GSMA’s technical director, calls it “a New Chapter for Mobile Messaging:”
“Vital technical challenges”
We’re celebrating a big milestone within the evolution of messaging with the launch of … RCS assist on iPhone. [But] it’s only the start.
The subsequent main milestone is for the RCS Common Profile so as to add essential person protections equivalent to interoperable end-to-end encryption. This would be the first deployment of standardized, interoperable messaging encryption between completely different computing platforms, addressing vital technical challenges equivalent to key federation and cryptographically-enforced group membership. Moreover, customers will profit from stronger protections from rip-off, fraud, and different safety threats.
Anywaaayyy. It’s Anuj Ahooja o’clock, yeah it’s @quillmatiq-thirty: [You’re fired—Ed.]
We’re getting shut to some extent the place safe messaging would be the default it doesn’t matter what platform you’re on or who you’re messaging. It’s about rattling time.
And that is lastly the tip of these barf-green bubbles? Sasparilla hopes so:
At that time it’ll be time to go to a special shade bubble for encrypted messages. iChat acquired blue bubbles with encryption, guessing they’ll nonetheless need Blue for branding however Purple may not be dangerous for encrypted RCS.
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Google had hosed all their prior possibilities at a default messaging app in Android and this was their final likelihood to not simply have SMS as the bottom. … They acquired everyone within the U.S. and another international locations to line up on it, which is nice for everybody because it raises the bottom messaging customary from the Nineteen Nineties to the 2000s.
It’s a begin. However ΖΞΓΘ CΘΘL has zero curiosity:
I don’t use iMessage for safety or privateness, I take advantage of it as a result of that’s what most of my contacts use. … You’re on the lookout for a repair to an issue that doesn’t actually exist.
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Should you’re going to be that paranoid then I assume your cloud account is encrypted shopper aspect so [Apple] can’t see your info. … You’re both paranoid on a regular basis or not one of the time, you don’t get to choose and select.
Will Apple truly comply with by way of? _xeno_ doubts it:
This has nothing to do with Android interoperability and the whole lot to do with China telling them so as to add RCS assist. … Which is why you’ll observe that iOS RCS doesn’t work in every single place but. Apple is deliberately slow-rolling it, refusing to work with smaller carriers and insisting that they implement issues on their backend to make it work, regardless of Android working simply fantastic as-is.
Get off the fence. standardUser holds no bars:
iMessage is a rip-off. A advertising and marketing software designed to create social friction, largely amongst minors, to promote extra telephones. Any firm with a shred of decency would let individuals … use the service on any {hardware}.
In the meantime, with a worldwide perspective, right here’s JippaLippa:
Fully irrelevant in Europe. Right here it’s WhatsApp city. All of the individuals I do know with an iPhone by no means used iMessage as soon as.
And Lastly:
Lady Miss Kier, Q-Tip and the Mar-Keys
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