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FBI Warns iPhone And Android Users—Stop Sending Texts

US officials urge citizens to use encrypted messaging and calls wherever they can—here’s what you need to know.

The backdrop is the Chinese hacking of US networks that is reportedly “ongoing and likely larger in scale than previously understood.” Fully encrypted comms is the best defense against this compromise, and Americans are being urged to use that wherever possible. As reported by Politico, advice given by CISA’s Jeff Greene and an unnamed FBI senior official included “strongly urging Americans to ‘use your encrypted communications where you have it… we definitely need to do that, kind of look at what it means long-term, how we secure our networks’.” It remains a stark irony that while Google and Apple separately advise Android and iPhone users to rely on end-to-end encryption, when it comes to RCS it’s still missing, with no timeline in sight for a fix.

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