From a design standpoint, it’s impossible to tell. While a text has a little tail on one side like a cartoon dialogue bubble, indicating that it is speech, reactions are trailed by a distinct small. It means they pushed the “!!” button on their screen. It’s completely useless and lost on the non-Apple receipient though, since there’s a high likelihood they have no idea what “emphasized” even means. Apple's iMessage is believed to be among the most secure, surveillance-proof messaging tools. But hackers have exposed a flaw that allows malicious interception, impersonation, and the viewing of. Mar 13, 2018 While only available to those operating within iMessage, these are the only people who matter anyway, so it’s ok! Simply press on a specific message and you can “heart”, “thumbs up”, “thumbs down”. Apr 18, 2021 One of the key differences between iPhone and Android is Android devices can't use iMessage. That's true, but if you have the right software, the right kind of computer, and some technical savvy, or at least an appetite for experimentation, it's actually possible to set up iMessage for your Android phone.

In September 2016, Apple released iOS 10. With it came the iMessage Tapback, the convenient and highly ambiguous reaction feature that — nearly three years later — no one quite knows how to use.

Tapbacks were created, one assumes, to make texting more convenient. It's true that they're nearly effortless to employ: Simply press on a message until you're presented with the Tapback options — a heart, a thumbs up, a thumbs down, a HAHA, a double exclamation point, and a question mark — and pick the one you want. Easy, right? You didn't even have to type anything!

Here's the trouble, though. There's no practical consensus on what, exactly, Tapbacks are supposed to be, or mean. Thus, no implicit code of etiquette has emerged around their use. In our already anxiety-ridden texting culture, that's a recipe for chaos.

The main question appears to be whether Tapbacks are meant to function as actual messages or as social media reactions. (Before you ask: Yes, iMessage is a social network.) Apple's blurb on the subject calls Tapbacks a way to 'quickly reply' to texts. But the mechanics and appearance of the feature are more similar to, say, a Twitter like, which is decidedly not a reply. A reply is (generally) meant to move a conversation forward; a reaction, which often marks the end of an exchange, reflects on messages already sent.

So when someone reacts to your question with a thumbs up Tapback, you just don't know: Are they reacting to the message ('Thanks for asking me to go to the beach') or are they replying affirmatively to the message's contents ('Yes, I will go to the beach')? If someone sends you a heart Tapback in lieu of a reply, are they saying 'I'm into that' or 'OK, but I would like the conversation to end?'

React with a Tapback. Blend texts and reactions seamlessly in iMessage. pic.twitter.com/khUkEoJpJ6

— Apple Support (@AppleSupport) December 3, 2016

These questions don't apply to every conversation. If you're texting your best friend, for example, one Tapback probably won't matter to you at all. But if you're texting a more casual acquaintance — or worse, a crush — each message takes on a lot more weight.

Let's say you're texting a newish friend. You are having a pleasant exchange. You text them that you heard a song on the radio (in this scenario, you listen to the radio) that you think they'd like. You do not name the song. They respond with an exclamation point Tapback. No message. Oh god, what?

Depending on how you've metabolized the role of Tapbacks in the texting world, this response is up for a pretty wide range of interpretations. When I asked several people to share their thoughts on Tapbacks, the lack of any clear protocol showed.

Twenty-six-year-old Anna, for instance, would view that heart Tapback — sent without an accompanying message — as passive-aggressive. 'It's the new K bomb,' she told me via text. 'It's kinda signaling, 'OK cool, I'm done with the convo now.' If you receive an isolated Tapback from someone, that person wants your conversation to be over, she thinks.

WHAT THE TAPBACK TEXTING EMOJIS REALLY MEAN :
Thumbs up = great now shut up
Thumbs down = plain shut up
Exclamation point = you’re insane
Question mark = I’m passive aggressive
Heart = these words are like the siren’s song and I, a lonely sailor

— Karen Kilgariff (@KarenKilgariff) October 21, 2018

Tara, 31, takes it a step further. She views the Tapback as insulting. 'That's a fuckboy move,' she said. 'It's not like you're texting [them] for your own health. You're facilitating a conversation.' To her, a Tapback in lieu of a traditional reply indicates laziness at best and outright rudeness at worst. Typing out a short reply isn't that much more effort, after all. Even sending a single emoji, while still not super-riveting, feels a bit more personalized.

But not everyone views Tapbacks negatively. Olivia, 26, explained that she utilizes them as a 'nonverbal' way to keep conversations going — not as a way to end them.

'I feel like I have so little time for texting these days, so I don’t mind at all if someone responds with a reaction and I do it myself all the time,' she said. 'It’s an easy way to say 'got it,' but also a way to further a conversation.'

Here's an example from her recent memory. 'If [a friend] texted me, 'OK, so I made out with someone last night,' I might respond with just the [exclamation point Tapback] prompting them to tell me more,' she said. 'But also maybe I am a horrible texter.' (She'd probably interpret our hypothetical friend's exclamation-point Tapback as 'Send over the song!')

'It's an easy way to say 'got it,' but also a way to further a conversation.'

It's important to note that ending a conversation is not bad. We can't be communicating with every single person we know all the time. In fact, we absolutely should not be, and it's perfectly defensible to let an exchange end at a natural stopping point. This is where Sam, 24, finds the Tapback useful.

'I love them as a way to quietly and nicely end a text convo, instead of just like, not responding at all and feeling guilty about it,' she said. 'Here's confirmation that I liked your message but it doesn't really warrant a response, we're still friends, I'll talk to you later.'

There's where the confusion comes in. If Sam sent a Tapback meant to convey, 'Talk to you later, pal,' Tara or Anna might interpret that Tapback as a slight. No one would be wrong.

A lot of the confusion is likely due to Apple's lack of clarity around Tapbacks in the first place. (To start with, the term 'Tapback' is the least helpful name imaginable.) On the support page, even the example used to explain Tapbacks is deeply confusing: The recipient responds to 'Are you ready for the party?' with a heart Tapback. I'm sorry — are they ready for the party or not? What the hell does that mean?

The best thing about iMessage tapbacks: You can end the conversation with a mutual understanding that the conversation is in fact over.

— Eddie Cmehil (@yeddie13) November 16, 2018

The Tapbacks available to users are also a little too weird to be genuinely useful. The heart's a little too romantic, the thumbs up a little too flippant. The exclamation point is .. excitement? Screaming? Any strong emotional response? Fine, the question mark is pretty straightforward, but you can see how we weren't exactly set up for success here.

There is one area, though, where people seem to love Tapbacks: Fast-paced group threads. Several people mentioned that Tapbacks are great for acknowledging unanswered messages after the chat has moved on to a different topic. This does come with challenges — like the annoying converted 'loved an image' text everyone gets when one person in the chat has an Android — but it's also the one place where the message is distinctly, 'I can't respond to this in the regular way, but I want you to know I saw it.'

As with most facets of texting culture, it's cool to take the Tapback's ambiguity with about a cup and a half of salt. If you really aren't sure what a person means, the best route is to simply ask for clarification. You'll find out if it was a response or a reaction soon enough.

The only hard-and-fast rule is to never, under any circumstances, use the thumbs down Tapback. You will look like an asshole every single time.

A suspected state-sponsored attack saw dozens of iPhones hacked by exploiting an iMessage vulnerability that remained unpatched for around a year. The attack was a so-called zero-click one because it didn’t require the victims to take any action: the hack was enabled simply by receiving a text message.

The victims of the attack were Al Jazeera journalists, and is believed to have been carried out on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates governments, using spyware developed by Israeli company NSO Group. It is suspected that these journalists are a ‘minuscule’ fraction of the iPhones hacked using this method …

The Guardian reports.

Spyware sold by an Israeli private intelligence firm was allegedly used to hack the phones of dozens of Al Jazeera journalists in an unprecedented cyber-attack that is likely to have been ordered by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to leading researchers.

In a stunning new report, researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said they discovered what appears to be a major espionage campaign against one of the world’s leading media organisations, which is based in Qatar and has long been a thorn in the side of many of the region’s autocratic regimes […]

Researchers at Citizen Lab said the apparent malicious code they discovered, which they claim is used by clients of Israel’s NSO Group, made “almost all” iPhone devices vulnerable if users were using an operating system that pre-dated Apple’s iOS 14 system, which appears to have fixed the vulnerability.

NSO Group, whose spyware is alleged to have been used in previous surveillance campaigns in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, has said that its software is only meant to be used by government clients to track down terrorists and criminals.

Citizen Lab explained more.

In July and August 2020, government operatives used NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to hack 36 personal phones belonging to journalists, producers, anchors, and executives at Al Jazeera. The personal phone of a journalist at London-based Al Araby TV was also hacked.

The phones were compromised using an exploit chain that we call KISMET, which appears to involve an invisible zero-click exploit in iMessage. In July 2020, KISMET was a zero-day against at least iOS 13.5.1 and could hack Apple’s then-latest iPhone 11.

Based on logs from compromised phones, we believe that NSO Group customers also successfully deployed KISMET or a related zero-click, zero-day exploit between October and December 2019.

The journalists were hacked by four Pegasus operators, including one operator MONARCHY that we attribute to Saudi Arabia, and one operator SNEAKY KESTREL that we attribute to the United Arab Emirates.

We do not believe that KISMET works against iOS 14 and above, which includes new security protections. All iOS device owners should immediately update to the latest version of the operating system.

Given the global reach of NSO Group’s customer base and the apparent vulnerability of almost all iPhone devices prior to the iOS 14 update, we suspect that the infections that we observed were a miniscule fraction of the total attacks leveraging this exploit […]

Emphasized Imessage

Threat actors may have been aided in their iMessage attacks by the fact that certain components of iMessage have historically not been sandboxed in the same way as other apps on the iPhone.

The attack was discovered when one of the journalists suspected his phone had been hacked, and he approached Citizens Lab for help. With his agreement, they installed a VPN app that allowed them to monitor inbound and outbound communications. This showed that an exploit was delivered by Apple servers to iMessage, which then had the phone connect to a server hosting the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.

It should be emphasized that these were highly targeted attacks, and that ordinary iPhone users were exceedingly unlikely to be placed at risk by this vulnerability even prior to iOS 14. Innovate show controls sound cards & media devices driver. All the same, it is always good security practice to keep your devices updated with the latest versions of their operating systems.

What Is The Emphasized Imessage Reaction

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