iPhone and Android users will soon be able to send encrypted RCS messages to each other

Text messages sent between iPhones and Android devices will soon benefit from end-to-end encryption (E2EE), after the GSM Association (GSMA) yesterday published new specifications for the Rich Communication Services (RCS) protocol that include support for cross-platform E2EE. RCS is a long-standing effort to enable SMS-style cross-platform communications with richer features, such as group messaging, typing indicators, read receipts, and file-sharing — similar to what messaging apps such as WhatsApp provide. While many Android handset makers had adopted RCS through the years, Apple was the main outlier until it finally succumbed with the introduction of iOS 18 last year. Most of the core RCS features have been available for cross-platform messaging since then, but E2EE has hitherto been missing — until now. Selling point E2EE, for the uninitiated, is a data encryption method that ensures only the sender and the recipient of a message can read its content. For tech companies, this p ... Read full article.