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Google Exec Calls on Apple To Adopt Better, More Secure Text Messaging (cultofmac.com) 66

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Google executive Hiroshi Lockheimer has called on Apple to adopt the Rich Communication Services (RCS) protocol that would enable improved and more secure messaging between iPhone and Android devices. From a report: RCS brings a number of modern features -- including support for audio messages, group chats, typing indicators and read receipts -- and end-to-end encryption to traditional text messaging. But it's unlikely Apple will play ball.

[...] Lockheimer, senior vice president for Android, has encouraged the company to change its mind. In response to a tweet about how group chats are incompatible between iPhone and Android devices, Lockheimer said, "group chats don't need to break this way. There exists a Really Clear Solution." "Here's an open invitation to the folks who can make this right: we are here to help." Lockheimer doesn't mention Apple specifically, but it's clear that the "folks" he is referring to are those in Cupertino, who have been against RCS.
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Google Exec Calls on Apple To Adopt Better, More Secure Text Messaging More

Google Exec Calls on Apple To Adopt Better, More Secure Text Messaging

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  • Technology of Today (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Merk42 ( 1906718 ) on Friday October 08, 2021 @02:25PM (#61873167)
    The long uphill battle of RCS, and that Apple won't support it, stem from the same issue in technology nowadays. No company wants a standard that others can follow, they all just want reinvent the wheel in their own proprietary way because of greed.. I mean "innovation".

    Something as ubiquitous as Email would not have been invented today.
    • Apple may integrate RCS for its iMessage client at some point, this was from 2019. Of course for its connections to non iMessage users old SMS works everwhere, RCS has been a pot of different standards that have been different between carriers etc.. Apple has been watching, but they'd be slow to do it as they make big changes in iMessage about once a year, this is from 2019: https://www.phonearena.com/new... [phonearena.com]
      • As long as they don't fsck up the flow and function of iMessage.

        I often take for granted how well it works and the things you can do in it....until here and there I encounter having to text with an Android user.

        Has anyone noticed when texting with Android users, that they just can NOT seem to be able to send a high quality, large video file?

        Whenever I receive from Android users, and they claim they took the video at high resolution and full size....but I only end up receiving small, blocky low resolution

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        Of course for its connections to non iMessage users old SMS works everwhere

        Except when one of the users is using a device other than a mobile phone. This includes between iPad users and Android users, or between Mac users and Android users, or between Android tablet users and iPhone users.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Wasn't Apple trying to expand iMessage and Facetime support to Android users in the latest iOS 15 release? I haven't tried it personally, so I don't know if the actual implementation is as half-baked as I expected it to be.

  • Dear Google (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday October 08, 2021 @02:26PM (#61873173)

    I'd like to Signal you that there's a cross-platform way to offer secure, encrypted-by-default messaging with all those features that doesn't rely on a Google extension to that "Really Clear Solution".

    • Re: Dear Google (Score:2, Informative)

      by markybob ( 802458 )
      RCS uses the signal protocol, silly

      • RCS uses the signal protocol, silly

        You seem to think that counters my point somehow. But core RCS doesn't support encryption. Google added optional end-to-end encryption to RCS (via Signal's protocol), but they're only supporting it through their own Messages app.

        Not to mention that, unless something has changed recently, Google's RCS encryption will only work for one-to-one messages - not group chats.

        People can use Signal, get end-to-end encryption that's on by default, and have it work with any other Signal user (or group!) without needing

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The problem with Signal is Moxie Marlinspike. He won't let open source implementations interoperate with the official Signal app via the Signal Foundation servers, so it's their app or nothing.

          Their app is pretty bad. It needs a ridiculous number of permissions, and important security flaws just get ignored. You also need a phone number to sign up.

          That wouldn't be a problem if you could just use your choice of app, but you can't because Moxie doesn't allow it.

  • No Thanks Google. I don't need secure or advanced text messages. I don't need to see when someone is typing a message to me. I don't need read receipts. What I need is text messages that work 100% of the time, no matter what type of phone the other person has and no matter what version of OS they are on. Supposedly the system is designed to fall back to SMS or MMS when the recipient doesn’t support RCS, but I have personally seen this fail on several different occasions. A simple search on Googl

    • SMS/MMS is insecure and I'd love to see it go away. RCS is designed to be cross-platform and has the fallback so it shouldn't matter the manufacturer nor the OS version until SMS is possibly phased out later on.

      You're right - the fallback looks to be broken across a few carriers. A fallback that should be fairly straightforward because it relies on a presence or lack of 2-way communications. A phone wouldn't acknowledge receipt if it didn't receive the message. If that happened, then Google would have b

      • SMS/MMS is insecure and I'd love to see it go away.

        I fail to see a problem.

        SMS is useful because it is a lowest common denominator means of communication. Every phone, from a 20-year-old Samsung flip phone, to an iPhone 13 Pro, can use it to communicate. It doesn't break because certs change or expire, it doesn't break because of protocol revisions or Google decided to reinvent the wheel for a chat client again. It just plain works.

        Want something secure? Great! Telegram or Signal or your own Rocketchat instance or Retroshare or whatever you consider secure,

        • We need both a secure messaging protocol and one that is a low common denominator. At the minimum, something with solid authentication, perhaps at the SIM/eSIM level that can ensure that text messages are coming from the phone it supposedly states it is from. Perhaps even move the SMS/MMS functionality to an app on the SIM, so the signatures can persist even when a phone is upgraded.

          By doing this, this mitigates SIMjacking, and moves the weak spot to a cellular carrier CA that certifies that a private key

          • The only issue is that SMS doesn't need data to send or receive.
            Not everyone wants to pay a small fortune to have a ton of data on their phone. I know people that (gasp) don't have a data plan on their smartphone, which manages them to change their cellphone bill from $85+ CAD a month to about $15 CAD (this saves them around $840 CAD a year, so they buy their phone outright and are still left with hundreds of dollars saved). Most places they go do have free wifi, so they don't notice the issue of not having

            • Everything, even voice, is treated as data on LTE. This is a carrier billing decision, not an implementation decision. They don't have to meter it as data (except media attachments just like MMS does now) - it can be treated the same as texts or be completely unlimited since the data requirements remain very small.

              • It can be, but it isn't. I had to set the app to make the messages as SMS by default to fix the issues.

    • So anything that has bugs you refuse to use? Don't try to address the issues, just done? I mean, SMS has NEVER had issues! /s

      SMS has had more time to get things ironed out but it was never perfect. Just because something has bugs doesn't mean it isn't worth adopting and addressing the issues. Google isn't perfect but at least (in this instance, anyway) they're trying. Same with OpenGL/OpenCL/Vulkan. Apple, nVidia, Microsoft don't care to inter-operate. It's just bad and that's what you shouldn't be happy wi

      • Just about every product I use has some bugs. But when SMS meets my needs with very few issues, why would I want to use a more advanced solution that comes with serious bugs? I can't remember the last time I had issues with standard SMS. In the past month, I've run into issues with RCS at least 3 times. One of those times was significant because an important message didn't go out for several hours. The benefits of RCS aren't worth the additional headache to me. So I've turned it off for all the phones

    • What I need is text messages that work 100% of the time, no matter what type of phone the other person has and no matter what version of OS they are on.

      "No matter what type of phone the other person has" is strong words. Here are a few edge cases that have popped up in my own personal circle of contacts in the past half decade:

      - A land line
      - A voice-only "wireless home phone" adapter promoted as a land line replacement, such as those offered by AT&T and Verizon in the United States
      - A mobile phone that has exhausted its prepaid plan's quota of SMS messages for the month

  • The two technologies that are really simple to implement, but for some crazy reason there is no standardization.

     

  • > audio messages, group chats, typing indicators and
    > read receipts -- and end-to-end encryption

    So far as I can recall, iMessage already has all that; with the caveat that if you enable iCloud sync of your messages you lose the end-to-end encryption. What is the added value that I'm missing out on? Perhaps instead of merely quoting a few vague statements; a comprehensive, point-by-point, comparison of iMessage versus RCS and their respective technological merits and flaws would be a better method fo

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by prisoner-of-enigma ( 535770 )

      > audio messages, group chats, typing indicators and
      > read receipts -- and end-to-end encryption

      So far as I can recall, iMessage already has all that; with the caveat that if you enable iCloud sync of your messages you lose the end-to-end encryption. What is the added value that I'm missing out on? Perhaps instead of merely quoting a few vague statements; a comprehensive, point-by-point, comparison of iMessage versus RCS and their respective technological merits and flaws would be a better method for persuasion? 'Cuz both TFS and TFA basically just read like: "iMessage was invented by Apple, not Google; therefore it is inferior."

      I believe the main point is iMessage is an Apple-only thing, whereas RCS is cross-platform. Apple, of course, is completely against anything cross-platform, even if it's equivalent or better technology to what they offer. Can't have cracks in that walled garden, no sir. Gotta keep all those iPhone users firmly in Apple's grasp.

      • whereas RCS is an Android-only thing

        FTFY, at least when it comes to phones.

        • whereas RCS is an Android-only thing

          FTFY, at least when it comes to phones.

          There is nothing stopping Apple from adopting it. Doing so would allow iMessage-like features to be cross-platform...which is precisely why Apple will never do it despite it being a net benefit for both Apple and Android users. In Apple's view, anything that benefits anyone beyond Apple is to be avoided at all costs...and that includes Apple's own users.

          • There is nothing stopping Apple from adopting it.

            There's nothing stopping Google from adopting other standards that already have features missing from RCS. But those other options feature things like end-to-end encryption that Google can't seem to get out of "beta" for RCS for some odd reason.

            Google bitching that Apple is using their standard instead of Google's is very much hypocritical.

    • Google has all those things in closed ecosystems too. But have you noticed how you can simply send email (even with attachments) between Gmail and Hotmail accounts? It's an open standard that just works. The point isn't 100% feature parity, but the point is that we have a new baseline standard to meet.

    • And look at all those non-Apple-device iMessage apps! Ubiquitous!

    • if you enable iCloud sync of your messages you lose the end-to-end encryption

      That's not true. When one user sends to a user with multiple devices, the originating client encrypts multiple copies of the message - one for the public key of each recipient device. When the messages are sent out, they all wait on Apple's servers for a certain amount of time for each recipient device to pick up the message.

      If one of your devices is off for longer than a certain time period, you'll have holes in your message history because Apple doesn't keep them there forever.

    • iMessage just works. What we have here is the old grievance hobby horse of the anti-Apple crowd, a large and vocal contingent on SO . Fine, plenty of reasons not to like Apple, donâ(TM)t use it if you donâ(TM)t want to. That said, this idea that Apple is all locked down proprietary walled everything and that is extending from some perceived ideology, and that Google is an open source savior is as much utter hogwash as it is the oldest critique in the book. Apple contributes, adopts, and promotes o

  • RCS offers end to end encryption in beta, which could be a bait & switch by Google. Google does not want to piss off any governments and get banned, therefore they will never enable default end-to-end encryption in RCS. What they need to do is ONLY allow end to end encryption and drop all support for unencrypted communication. They will never do that.

    TL;DR â" RCS makes communication less secure.

    • RCS can't make communication less secure than SMS. Nothing about RCS says iMessage can't continue to use their own secure messaging between iPhones. Google can certainly use their closed protocols between their users also.

      • No, but RCS is a major threat to the security of messaging. By enabling communication that is not end-to-end encrypted, RCS is doing a major disservice. It's better that people switch to Signal, Whatsapp, and iMessages instead.

        • By enabling communication that is not end-to-end encrypted, RCS is doing a major disservice.

          Say you're in a group chat with 100 people, each of whom has on average two devices. Is it desirable to expect the device of the person sending a message to send 200 copies of each message, one encrypted to each recipient device's public key?

          • For plain text, I'm not sure it would even have a large impact at that scale. Multimedia is another story.

            If I'm ever in a group message with 100 participants, I have bigger problems than worrying about device and network performance.

    • Government hates end-to-end encryption because it leaves the snoops needing the keys to get anything out of the intercepts. Still, it would shut down a lot of anti-scam measures if we had true security online.

  • Seems to be a massive security hole to me. iMessage, Signal is end-to-end encrypted. Why doesn't Google just adapt one of those secure solutions?

    • Don't all RCS messages go through Google Servers?

      Carriers can use the Jibe software or build their own platform based on the open standard.

      Why doesn't Google just adapt one of those secure solutions?

      And how does Google "adapt" iMessage? It's a closed system. They already have build end-to-end encrypted messaging. This is all about interoperability.

      • Google would have to admit iMessage is superior and license it. Plus we all know how google likes to pull the plug on their projects.

        • Apple doesn't license iMessage to other device makers. They don't even make iMessage available on Windows.

          There is nothing inherently superior about theirs other than the size of the userbase with it switched on.

          • Apple's non-license seems to be 0 of 1. Other than Google, who else needs to buy this?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tepples ( 727027 )

              Others who might need to buy this:

              - Microsoft, for communication between users of Windows and users of macOS, iOS, and iPadOS
              - GNU/Linux distributors, for communication between users of GNU/Linux and users of macOS, iOS, and iPadOS

          • Money talks. I'm sure if google started talking figures then Apple would listen.

      • RCS is less secure than iMessages, RCS is often not end-to-end encrypted. RCS must not have a mode where it allows communication that is not end-to-end encrypted.

        • The proper comparison is against SMS. Android phones are not going to be allowed onto the iMessage platform, and Apple does not have to stop using iMessage. They would just fall back to RCS before SMS for non-iPhone recipients.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          In the case of a protocol that absolutely requires end-to-end encryption, when a first user sends a message to a second user with multiple devices, the first user must encrypt the message to the public key of each of the second user's devices. If the second user doesn't turn on a particular device for a while, an end-to-end protocol may produce holes in that device's view of the message history, as omnichad mentioned in this comment [slashdot.org]. How do you recommend to solve this in a protocol? Consider one device prim

    • Well, it's a matter of control. Google can ban a user at their servers no matter who made the Android device. Apple can kick anybody it doesn't like out of iPhone completely. Seems like there needs to be a central authority to link these two systems.

  • Two to go... (Score:3)

    by The New Guy 2.0 ( 3497907 ) on Friday October 08, 2021 @03:03PM (#61873315)

    Right now, nearly all smartphones are either Apple iPhones or Google Android OS phones. Apple has all these features for its own SMS app, but lack compatibility for most non-simple SMS to Android users. Android seems to have the same problems. Time for an open standard, I say.

  • third party apps (Score:4, Insightful)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Friday October 08, 2021 @05:42PM (#61873697)

    There are 3rd party apps for messaging and I don't need Google or Apple to get on board any more than they already have.

    Apple, please do not get Google's peanut butter in your chocolate.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      Say you have ten contacts, each of whom uses a different third-party messaging application. Good luck fitting all ten messaging applications in your phone's internal storage, and enjoy watching them fight over access to the phone's RAM in which to periodically wake up and check for incoming messages. If you remember the situation two decades ago, it's like having to install and run AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and whatever else.

      • Unification may sounds good to you, but it is only good if the RCS protocol is in any way truly good enough. Other chatting apps are cross platforms. One can access them in desktop too. Not for RCS. SMS is universal. As long as one is sending to a mobile phone number, one is sure the recipient can see it. For "secure", any communications that aren't guaranteed to be end-to-end encrypted cannot call itself totally secure. So RCS is not totally secure. Sometimes people may like to trade total security for eas

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          SMS is universal. As long as one is sending to a mobile phone number, one is sure the recipient can see it.

          Not always. The recipient's mobile phone plan may be out of SMS messages for the month, causing the recipient's carrier to silently discard the message instead of delivering it. I've run into this myself.

          • Not always. The recipient's mobile phone plan may be out of SMS messages for the month, causing the recipient's carrier to silently discard the message instead of delivering it. I've run into this myself.

            There is something really really wrong with those carrier companies. A sane phone plan shall not discard anything. Is charging extra fee too hard for them? My phone plan, if exceeded data quota, will only put my 4G data into 128kbps slow mode, not cutting it off. This is what a sane phone plan should do. SMS message delivery is even many order of magnitudes cheaper to network load. Any carriers that may discard SMS shall be punished. Even if you say, hey prepaid cards may run out of money! But come on, cha

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tepples ( 727027 )

              Even if you say, hey prepaid cards may run out of money! But come on, charging money or having quota for receiving SMS messages is immoral. We don't do that for snail mail.

              On the one hand, snail mail has or had the concept of "postage due" mail, where postage is collected on delivery. On the other hand, there was a greater expectation that the sender pays.

              When mobile phones were first deployed, local calls on landlines were unmetered, and long-distance calls (placed with 1 and an area code) were mostly sender pays. The deployment of mobile phones in the United States was in the same area codes as landlines. Because landline carriers did not want to hit subscribers with surpri

              • Because landline carriers did not want to hit subscribers with surprise surcharges for making a local call to a mobile phone

                Well, as Hong Kong is small, there is no in-country long distance, so I don't have first hand experience of how these are handled. But in my knowledge, in China, mobile phone numbers looks different from landlines (different length), so there is no way for "surprise surcharges" to happen. In fact, as long as one design the dialing mechanism such that long distance call must dial like long distance call, then surprise surcharges will never happen.

                An example mechanism for phone number system that don't dis

                • Ouch I forgot there is an valid exception for callee-pay. When Alice is in area Y, Bob phones her. Since Bob is only paying the domestic part of the phone call cost, Alice can be charged long distance fee. Or she can choose a cheaper mobile plan that won't hear phone call if she is outside area X.

  • Group messaging's the worst. Not only are there a bunch of incompatible standards, but it uses data, of which I have a limited amount.
    And what is worse than being brought into someone else's MMS storm, with no way to ever get out?
    I get unlimited SMS. I don't want any other kind of instant messaging.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      I guess not everyone is on the same plan as you.

      For me, group messaging uses Wi-Fi. I have a limited amount of Wi-Fi data, on the order of 1200 GB per month, a limit that I'm likely never to hit any time soon. My current pay-as-you-go phone plan includes 30 minutes or messages per month, with a 0.10 USD airtime toll for each additional minute or message. It would cost me tens of dollars per month or hundreds of dollars per year to upgrade from this plan to one offering unlimited SMS.

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