Finally, texts between Android and iPhone users can be end-to-end encrypted | TechCrunch

"End-to-end encrypted (e2ee) messaging is an important privacy feature that makes users far less susceptible to surveillance by hackers, governments, or the companies that make these communication platforms. When these messages are sent between devices, they're encrypted while in transit, making it near-impossible for anyone else to intercept and read the message. But until now, messages sent between iPhone and Android devices could not be end-to-end encrypted (e2ee), even though iMessage has been encrypted since its launch in 2011, and Android users have been able to communicate among themselves via e2ee since 2021."

"Over the years, iOS and Android users have had clunky communications - Android users can't use Apple's proprietary iMessage, but Apple refused to support RCS messaging, a more sophisticated upgrade to decades-old SMS texting, since 2020. Now the industry-standard texting protocol, RCS brings features like typing indicators, read receipts, emoji reactions, longer message lengths, and encryption to text messages. But Apple didn't support RCS until 2023, once it finally caved due to regulatory pressure."

"Google had urged Apple to support RCS texting to make communication between their devices more seamless - this was such an issue that people sincerely thought about " green bubble stigma," referring to the color of the message bubbles that iPhone users receive from Androids. Until Apple started supporting RCS, it was a common headache for iPhone users to get texts from their Android-using friends that would break group chats, or result in terrible quality multimedia sharing."

"Now, Apple's long-awaited support of e2ee on RCS helps further close the gap between green and blue bubbles."

End-to-end encrypted messaging is starting to roll out in beta for conversations between iPhone and Android users with the latest software. End-to-end encryption protects messages while in transit, making interception and reading by others near-impossible. Previously, iPhone-to-Android messages were not end-to-end encrypted, even though iMessage has been encrypted since 2011 and Android-to-Android messaging has used end-to-end encryption since 2021. Communication between platforms was often clunky because Android could not use iMessage and Apple did not support RCS until 2023. RCS adds typing indicators, read receipts, emoji reactions, longer message lengths, and encryption. Apple’s RCS support helps reduce issues like broken group chats and poor multimedia sharing, narrowing the “green bubble” gap.

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