Not as simple as that as many did ditch WahtsApp for Meta’s documented privacy violations, and their ongoing T&C which passes the WhatsApp metadata upstream to Meta and others. A lot of people also only use one messenger, and right now nothing connects them together yet. So I have masses of family and friends that only use WhatsApp, and I now only have SMS contact with them. About 8% to 10% do have multiple messengers so I see some on Signal and Telegram.

The last thing the world needs, is for WhatsApp to become the default dominant standard. That is a company that can be least trusted out of everyone worldwide, based on their history. With the app installed, the metadata includes constant location, usage, contacts, messages to who, etc.

It is certainly not where it needs to be yet.

Not really so, as MSMS is a major thing by us (outside the US) for most notifications from banks, gov, transactions, visit to pharmacy, etc. Incoming is fine apart from fact it is all open for anyone to read, but replies cost money. Also, where people are not using the same messenger, then it is sms text messages, each costing money. For pre-paid phone accounts, those SMSS messages cost even a bit more. SMS today is still the common denominator everything falls back on. It is very expensive when you consider what is paid, and it is only around 140 characters vs data.

From what I understand with Apple’s fallback (or like Google’s Message app does), if RCS is sensed by the other non-iMessage user, then RCS will be used, if not right now it would still default back to text SMS but then lose some features like hi-res photos etc. Just don’t know how it will work for me where I am on iMessage on my iPad, but when out with my Android phone will the iMessage’s wait a week until I turn on my iPad again. Would be nice if there was a proper presence sensing, and it routes to there. That may be possible with RCS, but we won’t know how Apple plans to use it, and they are not going to want it to be as shiny and nice as sending an iMessage…

It does seem to have innovated quite quickly. I’m still using Bitwarden as I have the paid access to biometrics etc, and it has a nice tweak also to add unique e-mails for every login, etc. But I’m interested to see where Proton Pass will be in another few months, seeing I’m already paying for their service, and maybe I can consolidate my expenses a bit. I actually got drawn into paid Proton by leaving ExpressVPN, which I needed for Netflix, and then found Proton (with one or two others) were the only one’s handling Netflix’s geofencing quite well. Looking at options is always good.

No just have “Proton for Business newsletter” disabled but I see many of their mails say only once a quarter etc. So seems they don’t send out every month.

It is the same for Bitwarden. What I noticed is if I go to a site with passkeys, then Bitwarden prompts me with a pop-up to want to add a passkey. It’s not something you manually add, apparently.

Not really, right now as the password resets all undermine passkeys for many sites. One day if/when passwords get replaced then there will be a need, but that is a long way off probably. A good random password along with any 2FA is really good enough for most cases, and Bitwarden already does that very well along with even random e-mail addresses.

It’s not a race and I would not even start to use passkeys until I know they can move with me across devices and OSs. Also, most sites that do offer passkeys, still offer highly insecure password resets which really undermines the security that passkeys should offer. I waited a long time for Bitwarden to start with passkeys, and they were going to be the answer to fully portable passkeys (I’ve been waiting so that I know my passkeys will work across all my devices and OSs). Now I’m waiting for mobile implementation before I can get going. I do hope they will also be offering exporting of passkeys, like you can currently export your passwords to other services.

Ah thanks for explaining that. It just makes it then difficult to fully move to passkeys with Bitwarden, which is why I’ve been waiting so long, and why I never stayed using Google or Apple’s passkeys.

There is a difference but right now as long as one uses a good password with a 2FA it is probably good enough. Too many services with passkeys are still quickly offering password resets via e-mail or text, so they, as sites, are not secure. And unless you can move your passkeys with you, like you can with passwords, you don’t want to get locked into a single device or OS.

Google’s own one may be, and that is their right, but it is an open standard so anyone can produce their own RCS app like Samsung has done, and the same way Apple is building support into their exiting app. Nothing should stop a 3rd party developer looking at the standard, and producing an open source RCS app?

Yes, but a percentage has to be seen in the context of the total to gauge its impact. India for example is 95% of 1.428 billion people vs Japan is 70% of only 124 million. There are just under 200 countries.

True, it is good, but they need to speed up on passkeys for mobile as many do use mobile devices and what’s the point of having passkeys on desktop.

South Africa

True, but the big number really is the USA followed maybe by Australia. Entire Middle East, Africa, South America, and Asia are Android. India is also massive (behind China), and India is 95% Android.

Yes, but as I said, as of yesterday still not implemented on mobile.

Yes, passkeys are public private keys, so a site only ever sees your public key. Your device does the match with the private key. So in that way, no-one can hack the service site and steal your password. But your private key on your device has to stay very private, and should be synced to another device, because if you lose your private key then essentially you can’t login in. If a site offers a backup “password reset via e-mail” then they have rubbish security anyway.

I use passkeys for some sites, but have been reluctant to go all in until I’m sure all my devices can support them. I’m not always going to have my desktop with me, and likewise my phone’s battery can be flat, etc. I’ve always wanted passkeys to first sync across all my devices, and ideally to be exportable and brought into a different service. Right now you can export your 900+ passwords, and import them into a different service if you want to move. You can’t do that with Apple or Google passkeys.

True, and the reverse is also true when a product is bad. I blog usually about what I’m interested in testing out, and when I see if may be worth me moving to a different service.