This week, Apple released iOS 26.5, an update that supports end-to-end encryption for Rich Communication Services (RCS), meaning conversations between Android and iPhone will soon be encrypted in the default chat apps. This has been a long time coming, and is a welcome delivery on a promise both Google and Apple made.
With this update, conversations that take place between Appleās Messages app and Google Messages on Android will be end-to-end encrypted by default, as long as the carrier supports both RCS and encrypted messages (you can find a list of carriers here). RCS messages are a replacement for SMS, and in 2024 Apple started supporting it, making for a marked improvement in the quality of images and other media shared between Android and iPhones.
Now, those conversations can also benefit from the increased privacy and security that end-to-end encryption offers, making it so neither Google, Apple, nor the cellular carriers have access to the contents of messages.
Metadata will likely continue to be collected and stored for these conversations, making alternatives like Signal still a better option for many conversations. Likewise, if you back up those conversations to the cloud, they may be stored unencrypted unless you enable Advanced Data Protection on iOS (Google Messages end-to-end encrypts the text of messages in backups, but not the media, so weād like to see a similar offering as ADP on Android). Still, this is a significant step forward for the privacy of millions of conversations worldwide.
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šØš¦ OH, CANADA: Last year, the Canadian government pushed Bill C-2, a proposal to erode Canadian digital rights in the name of āborder security.ā Now, comes that bill's dreaded sequel, Bill C-22. Among other threats to privacy, Bill C-22 would pave the way to backdoor encrypted communications of users around the world. But no matter what lawmakers would like you to believe, there's no way to create a backdoor that only lets the "good guys" in.
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š« SOCIAL MEDIA BANS: As statehouses ramp up for 2026, weāre seeing a concerning trend:Ā lawmakers rushing to regulate the internet based on flawed research. We cannot allow emotion or incomplete data sets to justify a historic rollback of digital rights. Policymakers are legislating blanket bans on social media based on evidence that would be rejected in any other field of public health. Before imposing these draconian measures, they must listen to the experts sounding the alarm on oversimplified conclusions.
š OUR PRIVACY POLICY: We recently updated our privacy policy for the first time since 2022. There's one change in particular we want to highlight: opt-in email tracking. We are introducing the option for you to provide explicit, opt-in consent for us to see how you interact with the emails we send you. Read our blog post to learn more.
