A mais recente versão beta da aplicação de mensagens mostra novas opções de visualização do mapa nas conversas, mas a Google ainda não confirmou se, nem quando, a novidade chegará a todos os utilizadores.
The post Google Mensagens está a testar mapas de satélite e trânsito em tempo real na partilha de localização appeared first on Tek Notícias.
Apple stuffs a lot of different kinds of tasks into Messages. It’s a junk drawer for communications with other people. Send photos? Sure. Set up a safety partner for when you are going somewhere? Why not. Pay somebody? Of course! And, yeah, let’s stick in a poll!
But I think the best use beyond text and media of Messages is sharing your location. It’s a convenient way to share your whereabouts with someone else or a group, either indefinitely or for a fixed time period. Starting in the version 27 operating systems, you don’t have to use Apple’s preset periods, either: you can set a custom duration, which can be up to 30 days.
Sharing your location in Messages is an extension of Apple’s Find My service and native apps. You can also share your location within a native Find My app—that’s on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch, not iCloud.com’s Find My, which only works with devices.
Like everything with Find My, your current location is locked down except to share with those you explicitly permit, and only for the period you choose, or indefinitely.
Messages offers two different ways to share your location:
As a pinned location: You can share your current location as a pin on a map, sent as an image preview with a link to Apple Maps. You can send this snapshot using SMS/MMS, RCS, or iMessage.
Starting in the version 27 operating systems, you can also hide your location via Messages (in the Info pane, tap or click Hide My Location) or the Find My app without the other person being notified. They’re also not told when you resume sharing.
Apple still hasn’t unified how location is shared in Messages across its four platforms, so I have to explain two divergent paths to the same result. (This is a bit overdue for Messages non-text/media features in general!)
Here’s how to share your location on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch in Messages:
A Request button appears if the other person isn’t sharing their location with you. Tap it to request their location.
If you’re already sharing your location with someone, there’s no duration prompt, and the Share button is labeled Send instead. You’re essentially just sending them a reminder with a link they can tap to open Find My.
On a Mac, follow these steps to share your location:
Apple determines your location from an iPhone, Apple Watch, or iPad, and shows you which device in the Find My app’s Me view under My Location. If you use Messages to offer your location to someone from another device, you’re alerted “Another Device Used for Your Location” and given an option to Cancel or Continue. With iPhone Handoff, which lets two iPhones share one number, your location follows the currently active phone.
After you send your location, the other person or people have access to it. They see a Location card in the conversation that continuously updates to show where you are.
They can tap Open Find My to see you within the Find My app or, if they’re not already sharing their location with you, tap Share My Location to reciprocate.
Likewise, when someone shares their location with you, it appears in the Info pane of any conversation they’re part of. If their current location is known, this tile adds more details; if it can’t be determined, a message says their current location is unknown.
Inset into the location section, you see their current city or landmark, a label showing how recently their location was updated, and a button. The time label appears as minutes or hours, Now (within the last minute or so), or Live (real time). The button shows the walking or driving time; tap or click it to open Maps with directions. Their location updates in real time as they move, which helps if you’re trying to meet up.
You can’t undo sending your current location, but in the Info pane in Messages, in any version of iOS, iPadOS, or macOS, you can tap or click Stop Sharing My Location to cut off the flow of location data.
Apple’s addition of Hide My Location in the version 27 releases lets you silently stop sending your location without alerting the person you’re sharing with. You can also resume from the same spot in the Info pane (or in Find My). The other person only sees your location is unavailable if they check. The reason to add this feature is both to allow privacy or safety, depending on with whom your location is shared. (Abusive partners or controlling family members often force people to enable location sharing.)
SMS/MMS and RCS can’t be used to share ongoing location information, but you can send and receive a pinned location with them via Messages, though only on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch:
For much more about Find My tracking, location privacy, deflecting stalkers, and AirTags and the Find My network, see my book Take Control of Find My and AirTags. It’s been fully updated for the version 27 releases.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]
Apple introduced iMessage within Messages in 2011 as its house-brand, end-to-end encrypted messaging product. The promise of iMessage is that posts are always encrypted, using servers and technology developed by Apple and controlled by it. The encryption keys reside on your device, stored so Apple can’t access them, and no third party should ever have the leverage to retrieve them. (There’s a big proviso there, which I’ll explain at the end of this article.)
Despite exploits uncovered over the many years since iMessage first appeared, the core protocol has never been breached, only device exploits or iCloud-backup extractions that allowed access to stored messages. That’s a strong track record. Apple has continued to tinker with improving iMessage encryption, while also adding an optional method of ensuring conversation integrity, Contact Key Verification.1
But in researching the update for Take Control of FaceTime and Messages, a lengthy ebook that covers those two apps plus the Phone app 2, I discovered you could be lulled into a false sense of security based on what you assumed iMessage was and was not.
The odds of this change in standards causing a security breach and your messages being exposed seem unlikely, at least right now. But after scrolling through conversations and seeing what’s going on, I feel Apple has omitted important signals for users when iMessage suddenly stops being used during a conversation.
Messages supports four kinds of communications, each with its own encryption standards and limitations, except for iMessage:
Apple sensibly organizes messages into conversations: a series of messages with another person or in the same group of people. However, that presentation method intentionally hides most of the details about how different communications protocols may be used within a single conversation. Apple likes to keep things simple.
As you start a conversation, Messages offers all sorts of visual signals that let you know when you’re using iMessage, as reassurance and branding:
That feels like a lot of reinforcement of the point! And, when you’re using iMessage, you probably expect you’re always using it throughout a conversation. But within an iMessage conversation, things can go wrong, and the system downgrades to the next commonly available option.
The hierarchy of Messages standards ranks, from most to least desirable:
The impact of that hit me while revising my book: when iMessage isn’t available, Apple tells you only inline. Despite all the information Messages displays about iMessage being encrypted, the inverse state is faint. This kind of negative knowledge, or information about something not happening, can often be as important as something that does happen. A warning about a fuel tank approaching empty is the kind of information every driver (or pilot) needs, for instance. If you think end-to-end encryption—or Apple-based encryption—is critical for you, then a pop-up message or other warning is what you would expect.
Look through the images in this story to see real-world examples I encountered this summer. In one, my wife and I are texting in a conversation that goes back almost two decades. For unknown reasons, Messages couldn’t perform a secure interchange—no security warning appeared, but something prevented iMessage from doing its usual handshake dance. So it defaulted without an alert to RCS, and noted that inline (see the figure’s top).
Because Messages supports RCS encryption, it can use it with other iCloud users, too, allowing encryption to continue even though it’s not iMessage encryption. Then, equally oddly, it went right back to iMessage (see near bottom).
If a conversation switches to an unencrypted communications method, there’s no warning; only, as you can see in another example, the gray inline message in a group chat of iMessage users (encrypted) shifted to unencrypted RCS when I added someone whose device didn’t support iMessage or encrypted RCS.
So how can you be sure what’s in use without scrolling around for sure? At any given time, the Info pane always shows the current state of encryption. This figure below shows two RCS conversations: on the left, an unencrypted one; on the right, an end-to-end encrypted session.
Because it’s RCS, Apple won’t vouch for the integrity of the session on the right! The Messages label reads “Apple can’t verify the software used on receiving devices,” and provides a link with more technical information and disclaimers. This is fair: Apple is relying on an infrastructure it doesn’t control.
With the above scenarios, I don’t believe Apple is putting us in jeopardy, nor do I think you should be particularly worried about it, unless you’re someone already in a high-risk category, like a political figure, human-rights advocate, or journalist. However, I keep thinking about how what we don’t know can still hurt us.
If you’d like to prevent Messages from downgrading security, you have options, although they may not be fully desirable. All of these are managed on an iPhone at Settings: Apps: Messages. You can’t control these message settings from an iPad or Mac.
This set of options and Messages’ presentation of encryption feels overdue for an overhaul.
I mentioned at the outset there was a proviso about accessing stored messages. The one exception to the end-to-end encryption rule is if you have iCloud for Messages enabled. In certain configurations, someone who manages to gain access to your Apple Account could retrieve an iPhone or iPad backup, retrieve that backup, and use an encryption key stored in it to decrypt messages and extract your data. That someone could be a law-enforcement agency, not just a hacker.
Because the Messages in iCloud encryption key is stored in the clear in the backup, this is the one scenario in which Apple can be compelled to provide information under the right legal framework that would allow a government-connected agent to examine your iCloud-synced messages. This is also an exploit that a criminal or other party could take advantage of.
You can avoid this end-to-end encryption loophole in one of two ways:
I suggest picking one. While, again, it’s unlikely your privacy would be breached, most of modern life feels like it’s about finding out how your privacy was, in fact, breached. Why not take action before that happens, however much we trust Apple’s infrastructure and integrity?
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