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iMessage and FaceTime Ranked as Most Secure Mass-Market Messaging Options
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iMessage has always worked wonderfully for me. I can't say anything about FaceTime though.... never use it.
What a pile...
I can use HANGOUTS on my Mac, PC... iOS, Android... it works.
I can't use iMessage or FACETIME on anything but a Mac or iOS.
So not really a great universal tool. Within the ecosystem of Apple - great applications.
But I live and work in all those ecosystems and prefer a tool that works cross platform - SKYPE isn't bad.
Bill
I can use HANGOUTS on my Mac, PC... iOS, Android... it works.
I can't use iMessage or FACETIME on anything but a Mac or iOS.
So not really a great universal tool. Within the ecosystem of Apple - great applications.
But I live and work in all those ecosystems and prefer a tool that works cross platform - SKYPE isn't bad.
Bill
So are you telling me iMessages can't be scanned by the Feds??? Do they have to have the device to read them?
For some reason I just don't believe this...
For some reason I just don't believe this...
What's the big deal? If I cared about security, I wouldn't use FaceTime or anything on this list. If I didn't, I wouldn't care which one I use.
Yeah it would be nice if it was true, but i just can't trust the security of anything that touches the internet anymore.
not sure if that is the point of the article. but maybe that's why it's more secure? just thinking out loud ... like you.
That's the theory - it's encrypted and Apple doesn't have the key, so that anyone (whether Apple or the feds) fundamentally needs your phone's passcode in order to view them.
There's no way of knowing whether there's a backdoor in the encryption that the Feds can take advantage of, so you're right not to trust that implicitly. On the other hand, if such a backdoor exists, they would like to keep it a secret, so that limits the ways they would be able to use this data even if they were able to retrieve it. In other words, if you protect your phone with a password and text your pot dealer, they're unlikely to be able to use your iMessages as evidence against either of you, even if they can get to it.
There was some legal issue with another company that caused a major setback on opening up the API.
Sad that Apple never opened up Facetime to everyone like Jobs said they would. It'd be great to use it with everyone, not just iOS users.
The key is generated by you, when you create an account, or when you sign in for the first time. Nobody has the key except you, if you keep your mac secure.
You can view the keys in your keychain, and you indeed can verify the identity of your chat partner, by comparing key fingerprints over a secure side-channel, but it's not easy for normal users.
The first thing allows third-party auditing. The second third-party clients. It could be open source and still require Apple devices (as there is a single central server involved, you could clone and create your own central server but without Apple's help the two systems wouldn't be interoperable.
Their website (at least the part of the actual test description) isn't pretty either (blue, yellow, pink looks weird and the title font look is too fat).
I was a little surprised. I hear that they hand over data, and they can decrypt your info. That's no good.
What does "Can you verify contacts' identities?" mean?
Like, if someone else shows up in FaceTime, wrong identity?
Like, if someone else shows up in FaceTime, wrong identity?
But Apple couldn't control the implementation of clients on other systems, which unless their code was open source at the very least puts up the issues of trust in the third-party.
And any client that isn't open source (including Apple's) could send along the key to decrypt the message (that key obviously being encrypted such that only the client maker could listen in).
What does "Can you verify contacts' identities?" mean?
Like, if someone else shows up in FaceTime, wrong identity?
Probably a good idea to get suspicious if the other party is wearing a mask. Though identification via voice would still be possible, even if not always reliable.
We might also call people we haven't met before in person.
