Does Google keep logs of my text messages(RCS)?

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In the past, I've heard about how Google can keep records of all your Google phone's past locations and text messages.

What about RCS messages which supposedly are encrypted from Android to Android? I know that it's possible that they secretly keep a log behind the scenes, but as far as the regular consumer knows is there any record being kept with regard to the contents of these RCS messages?

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I mean it's in the name. A message containing media and not text is simply not a text message. Many people use them incorrectly but it's literally in the name.

RCS is (supposedly) E2EE so keys are stored locally.

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I mean it’s in the name. A message containing media and not text is simply not a text message. Many people use them incorrectly but it’s literally in the name.

Hey, I get it now. Lol. I was just explaining what my mindset was.

RCS is (supposedly) E2EE so keys are stored locally.

Well, you can have E2EE with keys stored server-side. It's just kind of pointless from a security/privacy standpoint, but I've seen it happen.

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No you cannot. E2EE = end to end encrypted. If it can be decrypted from anywhere other than a sender or recipient (the ends) then it's not E2EE.

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You are clearly misunderstanding me.

If the keys are stored server-side, that means it's stored by either the "sender or recipient". The server is among those two options.

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I am not misunderstanding you. You just do not understand what E2EE means. Th server is not a sender or a recipient. It is not an "end".

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Okay, so, originally, I was going to look it up to prove you wrong, but after looking it up across multiple sources, it seems that you're right and I'm wrong.....mostly.

How-To Geek, Proton, and CloudFlare all mirror what you say.

However, the Wikipedia page section "Definitions" does back me up somewhat. It says:

The term "end-to-end encryption" originally only meant that the communication is never decrypted during its transport from the sender to the receiver.[23] For example, around 2003, E2EE was proposed as an additional layer of encryption for GSM[24] or TETRA,[25] ... This has been standardized by SFPG for TETRA.[26] Note that in TETRA, the keys are generated by a Key Management Centre (KMC) or a Key Management Facility (KMF), not by the communicating users.[27]

Later, around 2014, the meaning of "end-to-end encryption" started to evolve when WhatsApp encrypted a portion of its network,[28] requiring that not only the communication stays encrypted during transport,[29] but also that the provider of the communication service is not able to decrypt the communications ... This new meaning is now the widely accepted one.[30]

(Relevent text is embolded.)

So, I'm not misunderstanding, just misinformed that the definition changed.

Make no mistake, of course: I do appreciate you correcting me as I hadn't realized the definition had changed. Lol.

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