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Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#971

Post by alephnan »

Zuiii wrote: post #631
jlarocco wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His first sentence about privacy and security is nonsense, but his second sentence hits the nail on the head. If the richest company in the world wanted their chat app to run on Android, it would by now. It's strange Apple doesn't sell an iMessage Android app, but I'm sure they've had somebody do the math and found out that it's more money for Apple in the long run if they don't.

Completely agreed about the nonsensical first claim. We have many third-party clients for other messaging platforms where privacy and security are a primary feature. It's completely tenable, especially for a player like Apple. Or put another way: If the privacy and security of imessage is compromised by someone building another client, I'd argue that you never had either to begin with.

> If the privacy and security of imessage is compromised by someone building another client, I'd argue that you never had either to begin with

That's like saying the internet protocol is neither private and secure because people willingly use random public Wi-Fi

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#972

Post by 197700 »

dwaite wrote: post #684
Zuiii wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agreed about the nonsensical first claim. We have many third-party clients for other messaging platforms where privacy and security are a primary feature. It's completely tenable, especially for a player like Apple. Or put another way: If the privacy and security of imessage is compromised by someone building another client, I'd argue that you never had either to begin with.

> Completely agreed about the nonsensical first claim. We have many third-party clients for other messaging platforms where privacy and security are a primary feature. I can't think of an any with independent implementations. For instance, have a few third party Signal clients, which work by using the official libSignal . These are not third party clients, but third party GUIs. Use of libSignal on the official Signal…

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Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#973

Post by 197700 »

197700 wrote: post #972
dwaite wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Completely agreed about the nonsensical first claim. We have many third-party clients for other messaging platforms where privacy and security are a primary feature. I can't think of an any with independent implementations. For instance, have a few third party Signal clients, which work by using the official libSignal . These are not third party clients, but third party GUIs. Use of libSignal on the official Signal…

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Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#974

Post by Grustaf »

CivBase wrote: post #113
Grustaf wrote: post #81

> "if Apple truly cares about the privacy and security of their own iPhone users, why would they stop a service that enables their own users to now send encrypted messages to Android users, rather than using unsecure SMS?" - Eric Migicovsky 1. If Apple sees this as a gap, it is very obvious that they would address that themselves, rather than by allowing a hack to exploit loopholes in their architecture 2. Since Appl…

> 2. Since Apple has no control over the Beeper mini client, they would not consider it safe, it could easily be spying on users without their knowledge. Since I have no control over iMessage, I would not consider it safe. It could easily be spying on me without my knowledge.

> Since I have no control over iMessage, I would not consider it safe.

I would trust iMessage about 95% less if I had written, or even implemented, the protocols myself, and I consider myself a pretty good developer.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#975

Post by CivBase »

Grustaf wrote: post #974
CivBase wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Since Apple has no control over the Beeper mini client, they would not consider it safe, it could easily be spying on users without their knowledge. Since I have no control over iMessage, I would not consider it safe. It could easily be spying on me without my knowledge.

> Since I have no control over iMessage, I would not consider it safe. I would trust iMessage about 95% less if I had written, or even implemented, the protocols myself, and I consider myself a pretty good developer.

If I'm expected to believe a messaging app is secure, the first thing I want is an open protocol. An open source client would be nice too, but honestly I'm fine with just the protocol.

I do not need to have had a hand in developing any of this. It's not my expertise and, like you, I'd feel more comfortable having it developed by the experts.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#976

Post by jeroenhd »

meonkeys wrote: post #910
jeroenhd wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why Signal closed their source code: if you allow access to your network, you're only accepting spam. For their users' security, it's essential that they must guard access to their network as much as possible.

I feel the need to get a bit pedantic here. I'm not trying to pick a fight; I truly hope it helps clear up a few things. Signal is open source. It's a fair argument that they make it difficult to use servers other than theirs, and we can't be sure exactly what they run server-side, but their code is possible to fork and all that. Their licensing is clear. Even the choice of AGPL is significant here: they must provide…

I was hoping the /s wasn't necessary, but just to be clear: my comment was entirely sarcastic. Signal has had its issues in terms of open source-ness (like that time they stopped publishing their code for quite some time) but the client and server are open source, and while they're not huge fans of alternative clients, they have designed their protocol so that it's practically impossible for them to refuse alternative clients, purely out of privacy considerations.

Now that Signal has usernames you can share, rather than phone numbers, I think the phone number decision is a lot less problematic.

Strangely enough, I did receive spam this week. Or at least I think I did, an account I didn't recognise with a profile picture of a woman I didn't recognise sent me "hi". This coincided with my first SMS spam of the year and spam on an email address I used for one specific company, so I guess they've been hacked and had their database dumped. Maybe I'm just lucky, but spam just isn't a problem for me.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#977

Post by meepmorp »

jetpackjoe wrote: post #942
Vicinity9635 wrote: post #941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression iMessage is e2e encrypted, meaning Apple doesn't have access to them.

Yes, but messages from iPhones *to* androids is not encrypted.

SMS is a feature of the mobile network and those messages are handled directly by carriers, without any involvement by Apple.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#978

Post by badwolf »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #204
MBCook wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple announced RCS support. That will provide what you want.

Right, but that's likely not coming out for another year yet, and requires everyone involved to update their phones (yet another hassle for non-technical users, they will put updates off for as long as they can). As the quote in the article says, Apple clearly recognizes the issue, and beeper mini fixes it now , not "at some point in the future".

I've personally found Apple users are some of the quickest to install updates/upgrades in bulk/mass.

I think one of the key reasons, other than apple sending push notifications that it's going to automatically install overnight, is they bundle candy/goodies to entice users to update asap - Want the new emojis so your friends stop sending you scary black boxes with an x over it? Update now.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#979

Post by meepmorp »

kstrauser wrote: post #878
robertoandred wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage doesn't send SMS/MMS messages.

Of course it does.

iMessage does not send SMS or MMS.

SMS messaging is a feature of the mobile network, and they're sent directly from the device to the carrier SMSC without going through Apple's servers. You might be confusing iMessage with Messages. The former is a messaging platform, the latter is an app that can send messages either via iMessage or SMS (assuming a mobile device, or pairing with an iPhone).

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#980

Post by Spivak »

nickez wrote: post #967
Spivak wrote: post #960

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "chat" is pretty much meaningless as a term. The only common thread between chat apps is "bidirectional data transfer between at least two devices." SMS and Discord are both chat but have wildly different completely incompatible semantics, iMessage embeds full iOS apps and a payment network into the chat. I can't see any world where chat gets standardized that doesn't involve throwing out everything except th…

You can have different standards for different use cases. So you mean that iMessage and rcs are so different that Android can't use iMessage or apple couldn't use rcs? We don't need to find one standard to rule them all. But we need to stop anti-competition behavior like allowing these protocols to be exclusive.

Used as a common denominator for basic communication, yes. Use for the kinds of rich interactions and modalities (like the "server" metaphor) that Apple, Google, and everyone else wants to add to chat, no. And that's where we get lost in "extension hell."
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