Apple is preparing to make its biggest change to iPhone messaging in more than a decade, introducing advanced support for Rich Communication Services (RCS), but security concerns still remain.
This update is expected to improve messaging between iPhone and Android users, with some messages now capable of end-to-end encryption.
When Apple introduced iMessage in 2011, it was designed to be completely secure. The company says that with Blue Bubble messages, “your conversations are end-to-end encrypted, so they can’t be read when sent between devices.”
In contrast, traditional SMS messages, shown as green bubbles, are not encrypted.
Apple previously warned that “RCS messages are not end-to-end encrypted, meaning that when they are sent between devices they are not protected from third parties reading them.”
While the new upgrade adds encryption capabilities to RCS, it still depends on all users and carriers supporting the same standards.
If not, messages may fall back to less secure formats such as standard RCS or SMS.
This limit has led to renewed warnings about the risks of texting on various platforms.
Despite the changes, Apple’s green bubbles will remain, highlighting the divide between secure and less secure messaging systems.
