Some carriers allow photo messages on Google

Rob Pegoraro, Special for USA TODAY 9:11 a.m. EST January 11, 2014
Q. Picture messages sent to my Google Voice number actually arrive (sort of; the
photos get delivered separately to my Gmail account). Does Google Voice speak
MMS now?
A. For years, Google's phone-routing system would not even accept multimedia
messages you could try to send one, but it would never arrive and the recipient
would have no idea you'd tried to share a picture or a video.
After years of inactivity, Google has begun working with individual carriers to bridge
that gap. But its solution is less than elegant, and unless you follow the right Googlers
on Google+ you could have easily missed these recent improvements.
Here's how this MMS support works if your wireless carrier has opted in: You get the
text of the picture message as a plain-text message in the Google Voice app, and then
the picture gets delivered alongside the text of the message in a separate e-mail (from
a "@txt.voice.google.com" address) to your Gmail account.
Sprint was first to add a version of this option, back in October of 2011
(http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/first-steps-towards-mms-support.html),
courtesy of its decision to offer much deeper Google Voice integration than others
(http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2011/03/google-voice-
sprint-nexus-s-4g/1). But at the time, Google Voice recipients would only get an MMS
sent from Sprint if they'd enabled an option to have texts forwarded to e-mail
(http://support.google.com/voice/answer/160203?hl=en).
Then nothing seemed to change for the next two years. In late October, however,
Google product manager Nikhyl Singhal posted a note
(http://plus.google.com/+NikhylSinghal/posts/MjyncJEbzxK) on Google+
acknowledging user requests for MMS support elsewhere: "We are listening and
working hard to make this happen, but we need to work with carriers and this can take
some time."
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1/16/2014 http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2014/01/12/google-voice-mms-snapchat/4372663/
And a week later, Singhal's colleague Alex Wiesen announced on G+
(http://plus.google.com/u/0/+AlexWiesen/posts/5ZPhfqXgtYD) that T-Mobile users
could also start sending multimedia messages to Google Voice numbers. And in this
case, that text-forward-to-e-mail option doesn't need to be active. Sprint users no
longer need to have it on either.
That leaves AT&T and Verizon, the two largest carriers in the U.S., as holdouts.
Singhal's October note predicted comprehensive carrier support for Google Voice
multimedia messaging by "early next year." Representatives for AT&T, Google and
Verizon didn't have anything to add.
All of these recent steps still leave Google Voice incapable of carrying on a full MMS
conversation: You can't send a picture message from the Google Voice app, and only
Sprint users can send one from the Google+ Hangouts app that's slowly replacing that
older program.
When those gaps get bridged as well, I hope Google gets a little more public about the
news. Its help page still says "MMS is not
supported" (http://support.google.com/voice/answer/115116?hl=en) and the Google
Voice blog (http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/) saw its last update in May. For a
company that says it's devoted to making the world's information accessible
(http://www.google.com/about/company/), Google really needs to work on how it
shares its own updates.
Tip: Check to see if your Snapchat username (or other account) was
compromised
If you worry your Snapchat username was exposed in that photo-sharing service's New
Years Day hacking (http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/01/02/snapchat-
security/4295789/), you've got company. Some 4.6 million people saw their usernames
and phone numbers exposed in the breach. A helpful third-party site can let you see if
you're among them.
"Have I been pwned?" (http://haveibeenpwned.com/) ("pwned
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn)" being Internet slang for
"owned," (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owned) which in turn is shorthand for "losing
control over your own computer or account") indexes that Snapchat database and
some 154 million e-mail addresses from other publicly disclosed breaches. If it finds a
match, it will report which one exposed your address.
I don't use Snapchat, but the site did correctly report that an e-mail address of mine
was compromised when the gossip site Gawker was hacked in late 2010
(http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/12/so_your_gawker_account_got_com.html).
You can also ask the site to notify you if your e-mail shows up in a future data breach.
To answer the inevitable "how do I know that this site isn't collecting e-mail addresses
itself," I'll turn you over to developer Troy Hunt, who launched it in December
(http://www.troyhunt.com/2013/12/working-with-154-million-records-on.html) and has
since upgraded it to allow looking for usernames
(http://www.troyhunt.com/2014/01/searching-snapchat-data-breach-with.html) as well

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as e-mail addresses: "I do find it a little ironic that here I have 154M email addresses
from other publicly released breaches anyway and people are worried about me
perhaps siphoning them off," the Sydney-based software architect wrote in an e-mail.
"The only time I store user-provided email addresses is when someone signs up for
notifications."
(http://robpegoraro.com/)Rob Pegoraro (http://robpegoraro.com/) is a tech writer based
out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, e-mail Rob at
rob@robpegoraro.com (mailto:rob@robpegoraro.com). Follow him on Twitter at
twitter.com/robpegoraro (http://twitter.com/robpegoraro).
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