Apple-Google Encrypted RCS Buries the Interoperability vs. Security Myth
With the news that Apple is embracing cross-platform encrypted messaging, it’s worth taking a closer look at the promise versus the practice of this interoperability feature from an end-user privacy and security perspective. Before, Apple wanted you to know that “if your iPhone messages are green,” it was more than a visual difference, indicating a security gap introduced by interoperability with users sending and receiving messages with SMS. When iPhone users messaged one of the billion people with an Android phone, an outdated SMS standard was used and that conversation could not be end-to-end encrypted (E2EE).
Two critical changes have led to this moment. “Text messaging” has evolved to use enhanced features and the latest protocol is now called RCS, or Rich Communication Services. The latest update to RCS includes E2EE capabilities. And the second is that Apple, which has been under DOJ antitrust scrutiny partly over its messaging practices, has agreed to interoperate iMessage with Google Messages and both will be working together to roll out end-to-end encrypted RCS messaging between iPhones and Android phones.
Related Knowledge Center: Digital privacy and data security
If you’re online, you’re generating a constant stream of information about yourself — sometimes voluntarily, sometimes unwittingly — that is assembled and used to craft your online experience. And generate wealth for data brokers. Meanwhile, designers and managers of the digital infrastructure on which the world depends are engaged in a never-ending effort to thwart attempts, by both criminal enterprises and state actors, to exploit vulnerabilities in those systems.
Signalgate | State surveillance