It seems, that RCS is coming to mobile phones without user approval. With it comes annoying features, scams and hackers, that abuse its insecure features. What is RCS? How is it turned off?
What is RCS chat and messages?
RCS is short for rich communication services and is a communication protocol standard for phones. In IT, rich is unfortunately not necessarily better. In this context, rich means, that plain text SMS is replaced by rich text RCS web links review, photos, videos, sounds, animations, read receipts, typing indicators, artificial intelligence, smileys, group chats, metadata and similar features. These rich features are not only annoying. They are also a gift to hackers, that will abuse weaknesses in this massively larger attack surface.
Turn off RCS chat, messages and features.
If you use the default Samsung Messages, you might want to migrate to Google Messages at this point. Samsung will be discontinuing their messages app.
Open settings, either in the messages app or in system settings, and look for RCS chat and messages. RCS chat, RCS messages and RCS features should be turned off, so only plain text messages remain. Google Messages will indicate SMS, when sending a message.
When the user wishes to turn off the RCS chat in Google Messages, the warning “You will be removed from all RCS group chats after 30 days” appears. The user simply has to spend 30 days in chat groups, that was never signed up for. Its just one example of insecure bad design in RCS chat.
Limit the use of SMS.
SMS is still widely used for phone number verification, two factor authentication, communication with older electronic devices and old school humans. SMS should not be used for general communication, because it was intended for short messages and does not have privacy protection, such as modern encrypted instant messangers does.