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https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/12/03/google-starts-sharing-all-your-text-messages-with-your-employer/

Google Starts Sharing All Your Text Messages With Your Employer

ByZak Doffman,Contributor. Zak Doffman writes about security, surveillance and privacy.

Updated on Dec. 3 with advice on other encrypted messaging platforms following this update, including WhatsApp.

Microsoft triggered a viral furor when it revealed a Teams update to tell your company when you’re not at work. Now Google has done the same. Forget end-to-end encryption. A new Android update means your RCS and SMS texts are no longer private.

As reported by Android Authority, “Google is rolling out Android RCS Archival on Pixel (and other Android) phones, allowing employers to intercept and archive RCS chats on work-managed devices. In simpler terms, your employer will now be able to read your RCS chats in Google Messages despite end-to-end encryption.”

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Google Starts Sharing All Your Text Messages With Your Employer

ByZak Doffman,Contributor. Zak Doffman writes about security, surveillance and privacy.

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Dec 03, 2025, 01:06am EST

Man using phone

Texts are no longer private.

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Updated on Dec. 3 with advice on other encrypted messaging platforms following this update, including WhatsApp.

This applies to work-managed devices and doesn’t affect personal devices. And in certain regulated industries it just adds RCS archiving to existing SMS archiving. But employees in regular organizations view texting as different to emailing, especially given the expectations around end-to-end encryption. That’s no longer the case.

This underlines the widespread misunderstanding of end-to-end encryption. The security protects your messages when they’re being sent, but once they’re on your phone, they’re decrypted and available to anyone controlling the device.

Google says this is “a dependable, Android-supported solution for message archival, which is also backwards compatible with SMS and MMS messages as well. Employees will see a clear notification on their device whenever the archival feature is active.”

Suddenly, the perk of being given a phone at work is not as good as it might seem. While employees have long been aware of the risks in over-sharing on email — a woefully insecure technology that is easy for employers to monitor, texting has been seen as different. And this isn’t just for regulated industries. All organizations can play along.

Google says “this new capability, available on Google Pixel and other compatible Android Enterprise devices gives your employees all the benefits of RCS — like typing indicators, read receipts, and end-to-end encryption between Android devices — while ensuring your organization meets its regulatory requirements.”

In response to the furor around this update, Google told me "this update does not change or impact the privacy of personal devices. This is an optional feature for enterprise-managed work phones in regulated industries where employees are already notified that their communications are archived for compliance reasons.

There has long been a concern that employees have been turning to shadow IT systems to communicate with colleagues — WhatsApp and Signal in particular. This latest update won’t help make that situation any better.

In the last 48 hours, I have been asked repeatedly now whether this change affects other messaging platforms, specifically WhatsApp. The answer is no. This update is specific to RCS within Google Messages, and works by enabling “third-party archival apps to integrate directly with Google Messages on a work device.”

SMS and now RCS messaging is built into the phone’s OS itself, handled by Android (or iOS). Over-the-top platforms are not. They control their encryption and decryption. Their databases can be included in a general phone archive, but don’t need to be.

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