Older methods for archiving text messages often relied on carrier-level logging, which is incompatible with modern encrypted messaging. Our new solution allows third-party archival apps to integrate directly with Google Messages on a work device. When configured by your IT organization on a fully managed device, the archival application is notified upon the receipt of each RCS message, not only when a message is sent or received, but also if a message is edited or deleted too. The archival app then reads the message data and makes it available to your IT organization. With archiving happening on the device itself, end-to-end encryption in transit is maintained.

This helps to ensure a more complete and accurate log of all RCS message interactions is captured for your records. It gives your organization 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.

https://blog.google/products/android-enterprise/rcs-archival/

psa: e2e encrypted messages are still decrypted at rest. so if one person in your e2e encrypted group chat has decrypted backup / archival on, messages are no longer secret.

My prediction: whatsapp is going to add support to this soon.

A LOT of sensitive messages are now going to suddenly be available through subpoenas. 🍿

Finally, PSA - use Signal and don't ever install work profiles on your personal phone. If a work needs to contact you via phone, ask them to give you one that's fully compliant.

One final speculation: LLMs, even the nano models in phone are now capable of gleaning relevant ad targeting information from text messages. Remember that all messaging apps - even signal - can maintain messages are end to end encrypted while running inference models on the decrypted text messages and send back only targeting information back to base. LLMs are going to be a big unlock when it comes to ad targeting. It's going to meet all current privacy regulations, but to the end customer's detriment. My bet is that openai and meta are going to lead the efforts there, followed by apple and google.