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What Apple's Promise to Support RCS Means for Text Messaging
- ggm 3y agoUnless there's some story in reliability of OTT messages then the only way RCS can be WORSE than SMS is lack of ubiquity. Sure, there are security questions, but SMS has no security so at one remove I think the EFF are arguing about how high we raise the bar. The critique is good. But SMS is not axiomatically better or worse than RCS, and weak security may not make RCS inherently bad. It depends.
- AAAAaccountAAAA 3y ago> But what’s exciting about RCS is its native support for extensions. Google has taken advantage of this ability to implement its own plan for encryption on top of RCS using a version of the Signal protocol. As of now, this only works for users who are both using Google’s default messaging app (Google Messages), and whose phone companies support RCS messaging (the big three in the U.S. all do, as do a majority around the world). A big factual error. RCS is supported by hardly any carriers globally. That's the reason why Google managed to take over the whole RCS ecosystem, running their own servers in place of the carrier's ones. Google has also choosen to rule over RCS with an iron fist, shadow-banning users at the slightest perceived violation [1]. It does not even seem to be public knownledge whether or not Google would allow generic RCS clients on their servers, but the fact that they shadow-ban those who run their proprietary implementation on a rooted device, is not exactly promising. I am not sure why an organization like EFF should root for RCS in its current state. 1) https://www.androidpolice.com/google-blocking-rcs-google-messages-rooted-android-phones/ https://www.androidpolice.com/google-blocking-rcs-google-mes...