Apple’s Surprising iPhone Update—Green Bubbles End Next Week

Republished on December 7 with the latest reports on Europe’s proposal to clampdown on secure messaging, which could see users denied access to platforms.

Apple seems all set to launch iOS 18.2 next week, bringing the long-awaited release of feature-rich Apple Intelligence tools held back from iOS 18’s launch in the fall. But the next iPhone firmware release also brings the most surprising update in years—a change to how your iPhone works and—finally—an end to those pesky green bubbles.

The saga of green bubbles versus blue bubbles is very much an American thing—the US has been the only significant market which has held WhatsApp at bay, and clearly when your entire social network moves to WhatsApp—whether on iPhone or Android, all users look the same. It’s refreshingly democratic and socially leveling.

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That said, Americans are trying it. Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrated WhatApp hitting the 100 million US users milestone in the summer, and those of you in the US will have noticed the billboards and Modern Family ads pointing out the benefits of seamless, secure cross-platform messaging.

None of which actually killed the green bubbles. It seems that this will come down to two government players—China’s Ministry of State Security and America’s FBI. The Chinese started it—not actually MSS themselves, but one of its arm’s length hacking groups which managed to infiltrate US telco networks. The FBI then understandably warned that US citizens should stop sending unsecured text messages.

That’s what those green bubbles are of course. They weren’t actually designed to distinguish social standing amongst teen and gen-z users. What they actually highlight it a lack of end-to-end encryption. To put it simply, blue is secure and green is not. It doesn’t matter if it’s old school SMS green or new kid on the block RCS green. Blue is still secure and green is still not. And so, when the FBI warns Americans to stop sending unsecured text messages, they mean green bubbles.

Cue Apple and that surprising update. iOS 18.2—now expected next week—will allow iPhone users to change default apps for the first time. Importantly, this includes your phone dialer and messenger, the very two apps the FBI and CISA have pointed out should be encrypted if at all possible. As you’ll all know by now, given the headlines over the last 72-hours, standard network calls or messages between Androids and iPhones are never end-to-end encrypted.

And so, following the logic, iPhone users should change their default dialer and messenger to WhatsApp or Signal or other fully secured options. Apple offers FaceTime for calls and iMessage for texts, but both only secure iPhone-to-iPhone, so that doesn’t work. In one respect, the timing of iOS 18.2 could not be better, but in another—perhaps for Apple and for Google’s RCS push, it could not be worse.

Not everyone will do this, of course. But many will. Especially given the FBI warning making headlines across the US in the wake of Salt Typhoon’s ongoing Chinese hacks, and with no firm end in sight. If some users do change, if enough users do change, then perhaps we can end the green bubble nonsense once and for all. The bubbles would still be green if texting Android to iPhone from iMessage—but if you’re using a fully encrypted platform as your default instead, this becomes irrelevant.

As we entered 2024, I suggested that it would be the year messaging changed forever, but I did not expect it to run quite like this. We really are in uncharted territory, and will watch with interest to see what happens through December as users respond to the network hacking news and the fallout that will inevitably follow.

What we really need is the green bubbles to turn blue, for RCS to be fully secured as another option for users. But despite the GSMA and Google working on this, it’s not yet in sight, unlike iOS 18.2 which is now just days away.

While this is straightforward for Apple’s US iPhone users, there was a risk it was about become more complex for users in Europe. Fortunately that risk seems to have just diminished—this has huge implications for the future of secure messaging.

As I have reported before, the EU’s so-called Chat Control would mandate the operators of messaging and other communication platforms to screen/scan private chats to flag material suspected of being CSAM—child sexual abuse material. While this singles objective is hard to argue, once end-to-end encryption is breached in this way, any material can be screened—political, moral, ethical, sexual, etc.

Chat Control dropped out of the news agenda some months ago, but then returned this week with fears that there was a renewed push to find a working majority of EU governments that would support pushing this forwards to policy.

Thankfully, as TechRadar now reports, “on December 6, the European Pirate Party reported that the European Council Committee stopped the proposal (yet again) as more governments joined the list of countries against it.”

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This is important, because had the EU pushed this forwards, it would have provided the new US administration with some impetus to do the same. When the FBI warned users to switch from text messaging to secure platforms, they referred to responsible encryption. This essentially means encryption with black doors for law enforcement to use to monitor content when warranted, rather than find themselves “in the dark.”

Interestingly, EFF’s warning on responsible encryption, issued when it was first touted in 2017, has an interesting twist on this week’s news. “By definition, when the customer sends end-to-end encrypted messages—in any kind of reasonably secure implementation—the carrier does not (and should not) possess the information necessary to decrypt them.” Hard to argue against that given Salt Typhoon.

Should Chat Control ever succeed, there would be no such thing as a blue bubble.