I’ve found that my circle of contacts use the default messaging app for group chats even more now. I couldn’t get them to use Signal but at least they’re posting in the RCS group chat more instead of on Meta platforms.
I see no point in RCS or Signal if there is still client side scanning through spy apps installed by Apple or Google or even IA capabilities on the devices.
I’ve heard stories about Apple AI being able to summarize Signal chats even when you deny the AI access to Signal. If anyone knows, please correct me if I’m wrong.
Edit So I think there is no point in a foss encrypted messenger app unless both parties will be on a foss OS.
I wasn’t able to reproduce what you described about apple ai and signal.
The foss-ness of an operating system or application doesn’t matter for the purposes of encrypted messaging, what matters is if the user has the application and operating system configured appropriately and understands how to not give up secrets.
RCS is even less secure than SMS though — it’s unencrypted and by design, Google, Apple and the carriers all have to be able to inspect the content. And the way it’s designed makes it really difficult to have an open E2E encryption standard. So as a result, Google<->Google is encrypted, Apple<->Apple is encrypted, but combine even one device not of the same type in a group chat and it has to be unencrypted.
Just like before, I will keep it disabled.
You can use Signal between Android and iOS too.
Couldn’t convince my family and others to use Signal or Threema. I contact them individually and in groups via RCS.
It really sucks and makes troubles all the time. Group replies get only delivered to me, media gets stuck… and I know that it is not yet encrypted, when I contact people directly.
I waited years for it, but now that everyone is on Signal it doesn’t excite me.
everyone is on Signal
Where? I‘ve Signal installed and literally only 2 contacts use it.
I’ve never even heard of signal
That’s awesome, now you know!
I have a feeling most people click the maximum privacy “hide from contacts” option at the start, probably not thinking it through. And that means you wouldn’t be able to see them. You can try searching manually as that sometimes seems to find them.
That said, when I asked people who texted me “do you have Signal?” I think about 50% said yes and the other 50% were able to download it without issue.
People are downloading a messaging app for you?
I wish I was you. Here no one wants to download a second messaging app just to chat with one person. Why would they? Everyone is on WhatsApp. No one cares about privacy and that the app is owned by Meta (Facebook).
My VPN doesn’t work with RCS, which is, at best, annoying. It automatically connects when I’m on untrusted WiFi. Hopefully anyone messaging me has the “fall back to SMS” option enabled, but I’ve learned that several don’t. I learned that because I didn’t get texts from them until after I left work, (and disconnected from the work WiFi).
Even worse, group texts don’t have any option to automatically fall back. So I don’t receive any group texts at all while I’m at work, but the senders have no way of knowing that. In fact, there have been several instances in recent memory of friends/family being left out of the loop on plans, because they weren’t receiving RCS for some unknown reason, which meant they missed an entire group text conversation.
My father’s phone is particularly bad about it. It’s an iPhone, and he’ll just randomly stop receiving RCS until he toggles his cell service off and back on again via airplane mode. But who the hell would think to toggle airplane mode, when there is no indication that they aren’t receiving something? It’s a catch-22, where he doesn’t get any notification that something is wrong, because he doesn’t know he’s supposed to be getting notifications at all. There’s no way for him to prove a negative, so the only way for him to reliably get RCS is to toggle airplane mode every few minutes. Which isn’t really a feasible use-case scenario.
I wouldn’t trust RCS even through a VPN. Its still going through carriers AFAIK, which means they get it in plain text.
The carrier has to support it which is a red flag for me since they have to archive metadata and the contents.
This’ll be a hot take but anything based on Signal’s protocol (including WhatsApp) is better than RCS in all ways.
A good rule of thumb is : does any of the participant maintain the backend?
If not then you are dependent on at least a 3rd party. If that 3rd party is not entirely open, meaning at least
- standards for the protocol,
- open source for the backend and frontend,
- alternative clients,
- alternative backends,
- both can be actually used (not just in theory because the protocol has been published)
then basically you should consider that this 3rd party owns your group, there is no expectation of privacy in it, it can be closed in an instant, messages can be modified without you knowing it, etc.
TL;DR: bad.
The people I know with ios still haven’t figured it out.
i thought it was stupid before, and I still do
They should’ve worked to use xmpp or matrix as their replacement for SMS, but they chose an alternative that let’s corpos run servers and not anyone else.
Fucking garbage technology.
You can use Signal between Android and.iOS, i know this as I (android user) use it all the time to msg contacts using Signal on their iphone, don’t use RCS ffs.
It’s nice that Androids can finally send me high quality images and participate in group chats without as much jank. Still not as good as an iMessage group but a lot more bearable.
I don’t think I can use it on my phone since it’s too old…
