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.

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.

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.

RCS should not really be a proprietary app in the sense of a 3rd part installable app. It is normally carrier provided just like SMS works. On Apple the default SMS/Messenger is Apple’s Messages app. On Pixel that is Google Messages and on Samsung phones they have their own one. It has a carrier hook and is apparently tied to the number.

Thanks I did not know that. I see they say share via the vault, but don’t specifically mention exporting, as in to a file for importing elsewhere outside 1Password. But certainly LastPass, Bitwarden and others I’d looked at were not exporting the passkeys.

That would be the same data then as WhatsApp, Signal, etc. We pay 100’s of percent more on SMS than data, so although there is a data charge, it is really little compared to SMS.

The point of the post was that Proton Pass is beating Bitwarden right now to having passkeys for mobile (Bitwarden has still not released that), and Proton Pass can actually export passkeys which Bitwarden does not do, so they are improving. I would not say though they are better all round than Bitwarden. I pay for both but am still evaluating the rest of Proton Pass vs Bitwarden especially around tweaks in options. But Proton is showing some innovation and momentum, while Bitwarden is slowing a bit. For those already using Proton they will likely find Proton Pass good enough to use right now.