Green Bubbles

Over the last ten years or so, we’ve seen a huge growth in the number of messaging platforms. With Google recently putting massive pressure on Apple to adopt the RCS standard, I wanted to have a discussion about the security and privacy of the various platforms, especially when we compare them to plain-old SMS.

This episode came about in part due to a Twitter exchange with The Mac Observer, on the back of an article about Google’s RCS push, in which the TMO team mentioned WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger as alternative messaging options. You can imagine that got me somewhat riled up, due to my very public aversion to Meta, so after a nice back and forth with Jeff we agreed to put together this episode to really explore what the various platforms have to offer and why a secure chat app may not always be a private one due to worrying metadata collection practices.

You’ll notice that we focussed mostly on messaging apps, rather than chat apps like Discord or Slack, and that’s really down to the nature of the discussion, as we’re really focussing in on ‘mobile messaging’ with your contacts rather than larger community apps.

Since recording, Sunbird has come along as a way to get iMessage up and running on Android devices. We

We’d absolutely love you to chime in on this one, as I’m sure many of you have differing views on this topic. As long as those views are civil and respectful, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to podcast@crossedwires.net, leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Episode Links

• Jeff Butts on Mastodon / Twitter
• The Mac Observer: Website / Twitter
• Tim Cook Makes Apple’s Stance on RCS Clear – The Mac Observer
• RCS End to End Encryption: Google Messages Only
• Signal
• What Data Do Signal Have?
• How Signal Handles Contacts
• Is Telegram Secure – Heimdall Security
• WhatsApp Security – They label this as privacy, but as you’ll hear it’s actually how they secure your chats, privacy is a whole different thing.
• WhatsApp Rebuked Over Contacts Storage (BBC News – 2013)
• Viber
• I Refuse to Sign Up to Viber, Here’s Why – Hayden James

Chapter Times

1. 00:00:04: Introductions
2. 00:02:51: What’s Wrong With SMS?
3. 00:06:42: Google’s Push For RCS
4. 00:11:21: Messaging App Usage Around The World
5. 00:15:20: Undesirables
6. 00:17:16: Chatting In The USA
7. 00:18:33: End To End Encryption?
8. 00:24:32: Meta’s Products
9. 00:25:36: The Contact Discovery Issue
10. 00:28:23: What Do We Mean By Privacy?
11. 00:33:04: Beware Of Metadata
12. 00:34:26: Facebook Messenger
13. 00:36:51: Telegram
14. 00:38:48: Hateful Speech Online
15. 00:40:23: The Importance Of Accountability
16. 00:42:46: Signal Benefits
17. 00:44:07: Privacy Nutrition Labels
18. 00:45:02: Cross Platform Experiences
19. 00:46:50: A Quick Viber Check
20. 00:47:00: WeChat
21. 00:48:28: Sensitive Content Needs E2EE
22. 00:52:23: iMessage, Green Bubbles, Android
23. 01:04:38: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW