Signal is Removing SMS Messages on Android. It’s Not Without Drawbacks

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Signal is the messaging app you should be using. Yes, you. All of you. Android users, iOS users, people who don’t have a phone? Get a phone and use Signal. It’s secure messaging done right, without a corporation that would want to read your messages or government loopholes for data collection. For Android users (as I sometimes am), some used it as their only messaging app, sending both SMS and Signal messages through the app. That’s coming to an end.

Signal announced in October of last year that they’d remove SMS messaging from the Android app. These are normal, non-encrypted text messages. They’re the kind of messages your old flip phone sent. Of course, on Android, they were still the prevailing message format for years. While iOS moved to iMessage, they didn’t allow anyone else to do so. Android would spin off into a number of messaging apps, WhatsApp (owned by Meta, formerly Facebook) being the most popular. However, there was a better alternative for messaging on Android: Signal.

WhatsApp can still collect metadata to share with parent company Meta. While the messages are encrypted in transit, WhatsApp is still a Meta company, and that means collecting data. Signal, on the other hand, is encrypted from end to end. They have no use for your data, and make it impossible to collect it on their end.

For years, you could set Signal as your default SMS app. This meant that, alongside your encrypted Signal messages, you could also see text messages. This was a great way to edge people into using Signal. However, that’s going away, and you’ll have to send your unencrypted texts elsewhere. It’s been hard enough to get people to move from text messages and iMessage to Signal. Now it’s going to get even harder.

RCS, SMS, MMS, Etc

SMS stands for “short message/messaging service.” It’s funny, you can have an initialism in your lexicon without thinking much about its meaning. OK, I suppose this has been going on for long before tech. One day, people won’t know why “lol” means a slight smile or light chuckle.

SMS is a text messaging service that allows short messages sent over cellular service. It would eventually also support photos and videos in the form of MMS, but, as any iOS user can tell you about the messages from “Green Bubbles,” those multimedia messages are compressed and harder to see. These messages sent over cellular connections meant for audio calls haven’t been holding up to the task. That’s where services like iMessage, WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Discord, Signal, and many others come in. These send messages over the internet, allowing for greater features, like voice messages, less compressed videos, stickers, read receipts, reactions, animations, and much more. Most iOS users just use iMessage, but Android users will often have a variety of messaging services because they don’t have something like iMessage as the default. It’s either SMS or a third party app, for most users.

RCS (Rich Communication Services) is starting to make its way onto more devices. It can support multimedia, read receipts, and could support encryption. However, it has faced criticism, such as Amnesty International calling out the lack of end-to-end encryption in practice, allowing carriers to potentially intercept messages. RCS also lacks support on all devices and networks, making knowing if you or a contact has access to RCS difficult before sending a message. Adopting the standard has been Google’s answer to iMessage. Apple has not implemented it in iMessage due to needing to decrypt their end-to-end messages. It would still hurt the security between iOS and Android messaging. There would still need to be green bubbles, only now it would be less clear that the reason wasn’t due to a lack of features, but reduced security. People wouldn’t always realize their messages weren’t sent securely.

Which brings us to Signal, and why they’re dropping SMS.

Signal’s Reasoning

“…we knew that Signal would be easier for people to use if it could serve as a homebase for most of the messages they were sending or receiving … But this came with a tradeoff: it meant that some messages sent and received via the Signal interface on Android were not protected by Signal’s strong privacy guarantees.”

– Nina at Signal

This is only an issue for users who set Signal as their default messaging app. That makes Signal on Android handle SMS and MMS messages, alongside Signal messages. It can be hard to tell which are which. Signal states they’ve heard from users who have been hit by carrier fees for sending SMS messages they believed were going through Signal’s service. Not only does this cost Signal’s users when these mistakes happen, it means messages that users thought were secure actually went through their carrier’s servers and anyone else as plain text.

SMS is a flawed, insecure system. Companies who want to scrape your data for ad targeting could look into it, as well as oppressive governments. Now, people in the U.S. have to worry about messaging their loved ones about their healthcare, because the police could look through those messages and arrest them for having their basic needs met. More than ever, secure messaging is important. Worldwide, in many areas where it’s still dangerous to be yourself, to disagree with the government, or to talk to the media, privacy isn’t just a comfort, it’s necessary to stay alive. When it comes to secure messaging, you can’t mess around with an insecure messaging protocol like SMS/MMS.

Two (Or More) Apps Again

At the end of the day, you’ll need two or more apps again. No longer can you tell friends and relatives (especially older ones) that they can just use one messaging app. You have to worry if they’re going to understand that there are multiple messaging types and why SMS is bad and Signal is good. Why they still need Signal if they have SMS in their “Messages” app. The already uphill battle to get Signal into wider usage is going to be even more difficult now, and all of our privacy will suffer as a result.

Really, Signal had a tough decision here. They could continue to wrap insecure messages in their branding or ditch it… or was there a third option? Signal could have pushed users to download another app, but also created a tabbed message list interface. One tab for your Signal messaging, with clear branding in the appbar and coloring/icons to indicate it’s secure, and a separate tab, without Signal’s branding, with a warning that messages are insecure, and with a different bubble color or other interface changes telling users this is SMS. That would involve explaining the difference between the two, something that can’t easily be done in a small area. That’s also a few weeks of work for the sake of supporting an insecure messaging platform that Signal doesn’t want to support. They don’t want people using SMS, they want them using their service, a secure one. I can’t blame Signal for deciding not to dedicate resources to support an antiquated and insecure messaging standard, but I do worry that it could hurt adoption of the only messaging service anyone should be using.

Android users will still have to use multiple messaging apps. Maybe one day we’ll all be on Signal and that won’t be a problem anymore.

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Sources:

• Amnesty International
• Nina, Signal