This has been a critical year for Android Messages, Google’s answer to Apple’s sticky iMessage. After taking control of the global rollout of RCS, the long-awaited replacement for the embarrassingly archaic and insecure SMS, Google has followed with default end-to-end encryption and a raft of fun features to provide a much-needed uplift to Android’s standard messenger.
But in reality, the messaging war isn’t really Apple Vs Google—it’s their smartphone OS duopoly Vs the so-called over-the-tops, and in the case of non-Chinese messengers, this means Meta/Facebook. And it’s Meta that has just leaked the most significant change to the messaging landscape in years—and one that represents such a radical change that it will be hard for Android Messages to compete.
WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messenger, and Facebook Messenger isn’t too far behind. It’s WhatsApp that popularized end-to-end encryption, secure backups, disappearing messages and media, ‘easy-button’ privacy settings and the shift from messaging to add encrypted voice and video calling as well. Yes, Signal is more secure. But that security comes at a usability price.
Make no mistake, it’s WhatsApp’s incessant privacy- and security-centric advertising that has pushed the end-to-end encryption focus that has seen Android Messages and even Facebook Messenger join that particularly welcome club. All of which now leaves Telegram as the outlier, given its lack of end-to-end encryption—oddly so, given its user-base.
Meta has toyed with bringing WhatsApp deeper inside its data-harvesting tent, but such was the backlash from users, campaigners and even governments, as well as WhatsApp’s teenage-style independence streak, that those moves failed. Which is why WhatsApp remains my pick as a go-to daily messenger for the masses. It has nailed the balance of security, privacy and usability.
While Apple users have little choice but to use iMessage, given its unique role within the walled garden ecosystem, it’s not the same for Android users—as much as Google might like to change that. And Apple’s latest stance on RCS—to reluctantly half-adopt the technology next year, just cements the current status quo, where there is no real Apple/Google alternative to WhatsApp.
All of which adds significant color and context to the latest WhatsApp update which has just leaked.
The glaring Achilles’ heel for secure messaging is the need to provide a phone number for verification and the unique identifier for your account. The personally identifiable information means that when you message someone—even the most casual new acquaintance, you are providing your personal contact details to those strangers. And remember, because your number is used across most such apps and social media accounts, it provides a tool to track you from one to another.
Messengers have been working for some time to resolve this critical security and privacy hole, but it requires a major rethink. Telegram has been playing around with fake/anonymous phone numbers for some time, and more importantly given its wider security benefits, Signal is now doing the same and has shared the scope of work required—”we’re changing the fundamental way that accounts are identified in the Signal ecosystem.”
Facebook Messenger links accounts rather than phone numbers per se, but the privacy issues therein are much worse than sharing phone numbers. All dedicated messengers, which don’t enable users to be screened, profiled and then contacted, are much better than Messenger.
And so, for different reasons, none of these will change the mainstream dynamic for users around the world in the way only WhatsApp can. There has been chatter for some time as to whether WhatsApp will resolve this issue. Now the usually reliable WABetaInfo has leaked that “WhatsApp is already working on allowing users to create a username from the web client… and now a similar option [has been] spotted in the [beta] Android app, enabling users to search for others by their username.”
The hope is that WhatsApp’s shift from phone numbers to user names, which WABetaInfo explains “will enhance user experience by eliminating the need for phone numbers, providing a convenient and privacy-conscious method for users to discover and connect with others within the WhatsApp ecosystem,” will drive similar updates across the board.
The ability to message without disclosing personal contact details is just as significant a privacy push as anything else WhatsApp has popularized, meaning that “can easily able to share their usernames, eliminating the need for explicit exchange of phone numbers.”
As ever with WhatsApp, the implications extend beyond text/media messaging to voice and video calls. The idea that you can run platform-by-platform usernames for calls and texts, with no cross-app correlations, and decide who can contact you and who cannot is a much needed. Just scroll down the last thirteen years (if you’re old enough) of your WhatsApp chat history and you’ll get a sense of how many people have your personal contact details, assuming they haven’t changed.
This will make online stalking more difficult, it will make it easier to block and delete contacts from your life, and it will stop organizations you message from monetizing your data, adding to the intrusive tidal wave of cold calls and texts we all now receive weekly.
While Apple and Google have the option to use email addresses instead of phone numbers on their core messaging platforms, their linkage to SMS and in Google’s case RCS remain phone number centric. It’s also not much better swapping phone numbers for email addresses. What we want to see are made-up user names that can not be tracked back to individuals in any way.
WhatsApp and others will almost certainly still use phone numbers for account sign-ups and ongoing verification through 2FA. It’s unlikely they will ever eradicate phone numbers completely from sign-ups and 2FA verifications. But others might. But that’s much less of an issue than providing your personal cell number to strangers. The shift from phone numbers to usernames that can be made specific to a platform will change the messaging landscape next year.
For Google, the triple hits of Apple’s clampdown on Android access to iMessage and its half-hearted RCS adoption, as well as this latest move from WhatsApp, means that its efforts to revitalize its core messenger with RCS and encryption seems too little too late to provide a viable alternative to WhatsApp. Certainly for kids and young adults starting out in the messaging world, the idea that phone numbers won’t be shared outside their social circle is compelling.
