Google Messages end-to-end encryption is now out of beta
9to5google.com
9to5google.com
In comparison, Conversations, which is a full-fledged XMPP client with voice and video included, is ~70MB.
Beyond this, any use of the google app comes with lengthy Terms & Conditions, which is not something I really want in my SMS application.
I moved to Simple SMS Messenger[^1], which doesn't support anything beyond basic SMS & MMS, but it's small, fast, and open source.
[^1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplemobi...
If it's too formal that's their problem.
Also, I would never give one of my 10+ phone numbers to someone who I wouldn't give an e-mail address to, except maybe my one junk/spam number.
It's awesome, because you can send larger amounts of data, works across countries and across SIM cards, can also be read on laptops and tablets if you don't have a phone with you, etc.
No, it did not. Email needs data connectivity, sms does not.
Lucky You.
I cannot do bank transactions,
Book travel tickets,
Order anything online,
. . .
Book vaccine appointment to save my life, If I depreciate SMS.
I once had to give a restaurant a bad review for requiring a phone number in their in-person, dine-in order workflow. I just told them that I don't ask for their wait staff's phone numbers and require it to be a customer. They shouldn't require mine, either. I have cash and credit cards and having money in hand should be enough to be a customer. Period.
I was able to use fake phone numbers for vaccine appointments and most other things.
Why not Signal? It can be default SMS app (not encrypted) but has the added advantage of switching to E2E if both parties are on Signal.
Having Google Messages preinstalled on all Android phones and set as the default is not a good solution either. Encryption has to be baked into the protocol, not individual clients.
The pretty much only choice left is to give you messages to proprietary services - either Apple, Facebook, Google or Signal. If you can get anyone to use the last one.
I've never really understood the US model of carriers selling phones on contracts with stuff bundled. Ideally they wouldn't have any say in these matters, but that is how it is.
I cannot send an RCS message from my Pixel to my wife's carrier-provisioned RCS app on her Samsung phone.
Google doesn't seem to be interested in a federated and interconnected RCS infrastructure anymore.
I do remember having loads of problems with RCS registration failing on the Samsung side, or just disabling itself.
Edit: Specifically I think it won't register whilst on WiFi and requires the correct mobile APN. I used to switch APNs to get a public IP address/ unfiltered internet
To my understanding, carriers were encouraged to either implement Universal Profile on their own or use a Google-operated "Jibe as a service" infrastructure. The former are now completely isolated from Google's network.
To me it looks like British carriers are simply using Jibe.
In general it's a completely trash fire situation where we're pretty much forced to use proprietary services without APIs to communicate.
Anyways, I trust Google my messages even less than Facebook.
But I love that RCS has enabled cross carrier (For carriers supporting RCS) E2E messaging.
And the main benefit over iMessage is that there isn't the messaging blackhole problem when changing device.
Google Talk (often called GChat) became Hangouts.
Hangouts is being deprecated.
A separate app named Hangouts Chat was released and has been renamed to Google Chat.
Google Chat and Hangouts share message history, but are otherwise separate.
Google Messages (previously Android Messages) is the Google-supplied SMS/MMS/RCS app for Android.
This allows better transfer of videos, pictures, audio clips, etc. SMS has MMS for these but it's tuned for very low bandwidth so it mangles a lot of attachments by limiting their size.
More info here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-to-roll-out-r...
When I had a Samsung galaxy I had to go pretty far out of my way to install google's messenger and use it instead of the Samsung SMS client. I'm pretty sure that' will be similar for the vast majority of android users. This would only be the default SMS application on google's Pixel phones. However, maybe carriers' and OEM's SMS applications are now integrating RCS protocol as well.
Edit: I thought that a Google Pixel using Google SMS app with RCS and a Samsung galaxy using Samsung SMS app with RCS would be able to communicate over RCS. User 'hocuspocus claims this is, surprisingly, not the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27526166 User 'dcomp is able to do this with his wife though, so maybe YMMV?
I could be wrong, but I seem to remember that there could be an additional factor: Whether the carrier is natively RCS-enabled or if the app is using a Google-hosted RCS system to get around the carrier.
Samsung does support RCS and interoperates with carrier and Google RCS servers (that is, "it should just work" if your carrier didn't deliberately try to block it). However it's not clear if they're implement the E2E encryption part of the spec.
The big difference in practice is that carriers can mess up your ability so send those messages - something that Apple rightly never allowed with iMessage.
But i do not want to use TCP/IP. I want to use SMS. When I want to use TCP/IP i use a different app.
> This allows better transfer of videos, pictures, audio clips, etc. SMS has MMS for these but it's tuned for very low bandwidth so it mangles a lot of attachments by limiting their size.
Ok. So google wants your pictures and audio clips. I thought they already have them from google play services.
In the end, that's why i don't update google apps anymore . They don't bring any additional value for me and only break things. Security ? They send all data to google anyway so there is no security.
If I use a sms, it is to use a sms. If I want to use an advanced heavy messenger, I will use one.
No one prevent them to lunch a dedicated app...
Is it only rolling out in the US?
> Gmail reads the emails to suggest ads.
Is this still true? IIUC, this is no longer true, and hasn't been for years.
[1] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html
Disclaimer: Work at Google, but not on ads/gmail, etc.
Their privacy policy says otherwise.
https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en#infocollect (This is the "Privacy" link in GMail's footer.)
>We want you to understand the types of information we collect as you use our services
>We collect information to provide better services to all our users — from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful, the people who matter most to you online, or which YouTube videos you might like.
>[...]
>Things you create or provide to us
>[...]
>We also collect the content you create, upload, or receive from others when using our services. This includes things like email you write and receive, photos and videos you save, docs and spreadsheets you create, and comments you make on YouTube videos.
https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/keeping-priva...
*I work for Google
That would seem make both statements true.
Disclaimer: views are my own, not of my employer (Google)
And as it stands, the current privacy policy gives them the ability to mine emails for ads. Even if they say in other non-contractual (?) channels that they don't do it right now, there would be nothing stopping them from doing it anyway. A user who has agreed to that privacy policy must conservatively assume the worst.
The rest of the policy is quite verbose about what data is collected and what it's used for. It doesn't seem like brevity was the goal when creating that document, nor should it have been when the document in question is a privacy policy.
I didn't know Gmail stopped reading the emails to suggest ads. But my point is that we can't trust your work company to respect privacy.
Of course, computers are very complicated and it's effectively impossible to personally verify all the software you use, but:
1. They'd be exposing themselves to large legal liability
2. to enable scanning they don't really need (they have lots of other ad targeting methods)
3. on an application likely to be examined by other security researchers to verify Google's statements
4. while also risking any employees who feel this is an ethical violation leaking this (Sure, not all employees would, but you would have to form a secret group of employees to scan, process, and utilize this data while vetting that nobody would leak this, in a company which ostensibly promotes itself externally and internally as ethical.)
I am on signal.
'dang says:
> All: please don't post shallow, reflexive reactions to a story like this, even if you're sure you're right. Such reactions are 100% predictable (e.g. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497174), and predictability hurts more than rightness helps [0]. Predictable discussions are tedious and invariably lead to worse—for example, tedious discussions turn nasty because that's the only thing the mind has left to amuse itself with [1].
Edit: I saw that your post got fully flagged during the time it took me to copy/paste this from a previous post I made. I didn't downvote you or flag you, but other people may have based on this guideline.