Items tagged with messaging
WhatsApp bills itself as a free and secure messaging application with end-to-end encryption and cross platform support, all of which have made it a popular option. However, it may not be as secure as advertised. Vulnerabilities that were disclosed last year have still not been addressed, and if abused, could allow an attacker to spoof messages. Researchers at Checkpoint disclosed the a trio of attack vectors last year, explaining that they could enable a hacker to change a user's messages, change a sender's identity, and make private messages viewable to the public. One of those has been addressed, but two of the attack vectors still remain, as researchers recently demonstrated at the Black Hat...
Read more...
Google continues to make its comparatively low-cost Google Fi wireless service a more intriguing option. It already has the advantage of friendly billing versus what the four major wireless carriers in the US charge, those being AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Now on the usability side, Google Fi is enabling RCS messaging by default on eligible phones. RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging is a communications protocol with more bells and whistles than regular SMS text messaging. Similar to iMessages that is used on iOS devices, RCS offers things like read receipts, video calls, encryption, and more. "With RCS in Messages, you can do and share more when you message friends, family...
Read more...
Earlier this year, Facebook came under fire when it was discovered that the company let a ton of user information fall into the hands of marketing companies. It's hard to say how that incident will affect Facebook in the long-run, but what we do know is that the aftermath has already led to the creation of a new feature. Around the time the Facebook security debacle went down earlier this year, users who were previously sent messages by company founder Mark Zuckerberg discovered that those messages were suddenly missing. As it happens, someone in charge decided to unsend those messages, which is a clear misuse of power, especially as users themselves don't have access to such functionality. After...
Read more...
If you own one of Samsung's Galaxy S9 or Galaxy S9 Plus smartphones a wild bug making the rounds is leaving customers on edge. Reports indicate that some users have seen the default messaging app randomly send photos from their gallery to contacts without their knowledge. One impacted user claims that the Samsung device sent the entire photo gallery to their girlfriend. Another user from reddit reported that the device had sent photos to his wife. The photos are being sent out over the stock Samsung messaging app. The particularly odd thing about this bug is that there is no record that the photos are being sent out left on the phone according to the Reddit user. There is a record, however, in...
Read more...
Google has announced a new way that it is connecting people and businesses using RCS (Rich Communication Services) with the goal of bringing enhanced features to standard messaging services on mobile devices with various carriers. Google is working with 43 carriers and device manufacturers to enhance native messaging for all Android users. One of the tricks Google is working on is RCS business messaging and that service has taken off well for Google with the search giant stating that companies across the food, travel, retail, and delivery services in the U.S. and Mexico are having better conversations with customers thanks to this service. The brands are all participating in RCS business messaging...
Read more...
It wasn't just you, WhatsApp was down for about an hour this morning. The outage impacted global usage of the app, which boasts over 1.2 billion active users. The app is a primary means of messaging between friends and family, and those people were not happy with the outage. The outage was first noticed when the term "whatsappdown" was trending in countries like India. The app has a particularly large user base in developing nations like India, which is also its biggest market with 200 million users. India isn’t the only country where the downtime for the app was trending, it was also trending on social media in Pakistan, Britain, Germany, Brazil, Russia, Vietnam, and Myanmar according...
Read more...
A popular messaging startup used in business settings is starting to see some interest among major technology players about a possible acquisition. That messaging startup is Slack, and one of the interested parties is Amazon. To make the deal happen, Amazon—or any other technology outfit—would have to come at Slack hard with a 10-digit offer, as the messaging service is said to command $9 billion (or more) from interested parties.Should Amazon make a play for Slack, it would likely qualify as the online retailer's largest acquisition ever. It is also one that Amazon could afford, though even so, a $9 billion investment is not something to be taken lightly. As it stands right now, no agreement...
Read more...
A hacker has discovered a way to permanently disable the built-in Messages app on any Apple device running iOS 8 through iOS 10. That pretty much covers every iPhone handset and iPad tablet out there, including the recently released iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, save for models that are woefully outdated for whatever reason. Just as frightening, the sinister exploit is rather simple to pull off. The exploit involves sending a bloated vCard, or virtual business card, which are used to share contacts on mobile phones. A hacker who goes by the name Vincedes3 found that sending a vCard laced with thousands of lines of code can overwhelm the Messages app to the point where it ends up in a crash loop....
Read more...
Are you having trouble keeping track of all of the different messaging apps that Google offers? Don't feel bad; a lot of us do. In fact, it feels like Google has a number of redundancies in this space, and with its latest move, we get the feeling that the consolidation has begun. Take Allo, for example, which is set to take the place of Hangouts in the official "Google Mobile Services" package going forward. That means that vendors won't need to bundle Hangouts with their devices, although they still have the option to should they want to offer a more complete package. Even if they don't, however, you would still be able to download it from the Play Store, which isn't a grand inconvenience....
Read more...
If you're looking for yet another way to communicate with your friends and family from your mobile device, you now have Allo, a new and "smarter" messaging app from Google. It's available right off the bat for both Android and iOS devices (sorry, Windows Phone users!) and integrates a preview edition of of the Google Assistant, which you can use to have a conversation with Google. "Ask it questions and let it help you get things done directly in your chats. You no longer need to leave a conversation with friends just to grab an address, share your favorite YouTube video, or pick a dinner spot," Google explains. "Just type @google to bring your Assistant into any group chat. And of course, you...
Read more...
It doesn't matter if you're chatting with a co-worker about a sensitive business proposal you're putting together or bantering about basketball playoffs with a group of buddies, the idea that a third-party could be intercepting and reading your communication is creepy. Messaging providers are taking a privacy stand against such things, including Viber, which is adding end-to-end encryption to its popular platform. Over 700 million people use Viber, more than enough to make it a target for spying from hackers and even government organizations. But just as WhatsApp has done for its more than 1 billion users, Viber's roll out of end-to-end encryption will help keep prying eyes from seeing private...
Read more...
Former NSA contractor turned whistle blower Edward Snowden is a fan of Signal, a secure messaging app developed by Frederic Jacobs (iOS version). Snowden revealed on Twitter last November that he uses signal every day, which is a pretty strong endorsement considering his current situation. That's good news for Apple because Jacobs is joining the Cupertino outfit later this summer."I'm delighted to announce that I accepted an offer to be working with the CoreOS security team at Apple this summer," Jacobs posted to Twitter on Thursday. His move to Apple comes two and half years spent working for Whisper Systems, the company that owns Signal. This is a big hire for Apple, to say the least.It's not...
Read more...
WhatsApp is eliminating its $0.99 subscription fee in favor of a new business model, one that won't bother you with advertising. Well, not for now, anyway. Instead of replacing the nominal yearly subscription fee with ads, WhatsApp will experiment with bringing businesses on board. "Naturally, people might wonder how we plan to keep WhatsApp running without subscription fees and if today's announcement means we're introducing third-party ads. The answer is no. Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from," WhatsApp explained in a blog post. "That could mean communicating with your bank about whether...
Read more...
We're constantly being reminded that our government has a great interest in our private lives, whether it's flying specially equipped planes over densely populated areas to trick tens of thousands of phones into forking over sensitive data, or snooping on Internet traffic, big brother's watching us. One of the few ways to maintain a little bit of privacy these days is through encryption, and in collaboration with Open Whisper Systems, WhatsApp is now providing end-to-end encryption for its users by default. The most recent WhatsApp for Android client includes support for the TextSecure encryption protocol that's being used for billions of messages that are being exchanged daily. At present, it...
Read more...
