It works completely fine without any Google stuff. It will just kill your battery and you'll have to check and update it manually.

Re: Apple or Google. That's even easier for them, because, you know, they've got access to the phone.

Okay, so no mobile chat apps are safe?

The point here is that Apple and (especially) Google are most certainly collecting your data when using RCS. And only the carriers and the govt are collecting your data in SMS, not Google or Apple.

In that way, I don't think any RCS is superior in any way outside of functionality.

I also use Delta over Signal for my own reasons, but heads up:

Nah, download Aurora Store from F-Droid, now you have degoogled access to the Play Store.

BUT a word of warning:

You still have to be careful of what you download, it usually lists known trackers to help with that. And "requires google play services" is often actually not true, some things that claim that work fine or maybe just don't give notifications.

It just makes sense to just download everything from Droid-ify and/or Fdroid ( almost all of my apps are from these two). Yeah but even with that, it can still get shut off. Idk. . I wouldn't risk it.

Yeah I do when available too, but if something I need isn't on F-Droid I'll use Aurora begrudgingly, just nice to have the option.

the default in america

Developed countries use literally anything else. TOTP apps, encrypted apps, Card reader code generation, identity providers, 3rd party verification programs, etc...

America uses it because it is cheap and easy and it pushes the infrastructure cost to someone else, not because it is secure. My american bank I keep only had SMS from american numbers to start, now they have TOTP app support, passkey support, and are going to phase out their SMS because of security.

Also, SIM phishing is pretty common... There doesn't have to be any physical access to the phone. It is a standard phishing attack and they get all your SIM details and spoof it in an automated system.

the default in america

No.

SIM phishing is pretty common...

No one was discussing security.

Yeah I got my young son and all his friends onto SimpleX because you don't need a phone number to use it. Works great except they don't use it, they still default to fucking Facebook messenger.

They also got a store called Aurora Droid. Its another alternative to fdroid. Now I don't know if it'll help with some apps from Aurora store but its another alternative.

I'll take crypto over phone number identifiers

I think that's just an alternative frontend for F-Droid, like Droidify (the one I actually use for F-Droid) is.

Okay, one last time. Those are two different issues.

The whole point of this thread was that it was possible to intercept the messages. That's all. I doubt the OP needs to worry about that. But it's possible as was stated by the other poster.

It's like claiming that mail can't be intercepted. Of course it can, but generally speaking you don't have to worry about that. Though it would be foolish to claim otherwise (especially when one quick web search can show you cases when someone successfully pulled it off)

Good day.

Edit: typos

Never heard of delta chat. Glancing at it on F-Droid, it looks a lot like Briar.

Any commentary on a comparison of signal v Briar v Delta chat on features / privacy?

Never used Briar myself, but I like how Delta is decentralized and resilient to outages even supporting multi-relay set ups, easy to use for the "normals," it's private and secure, low (no?) metadata. Among other things I'm sure, that's just off the top of my head.

The ease of use is one of the biggest, I couldn't send someone "normal" a link or QR code and expect them to navigate through setting up XMPP or Matrix accounts, but with Delta I've never had an issue, I've even gotten near tech-illiterate people like my mom to do it. Signal is easy too, but was out for other reasons (mostly phone number requirements.)