Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 665 posts

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#391

Post by rezonant »

zappb wrote: post #390
rezonant wrote: post #313

I think this is kinda technically a win for Beeper. I would've expected another 100% lockout to be Apple's priority. They were instead only able to block 5%, which sounds like a heuristic being applied, and possibly not even an intentional block of Beeper (in the sense that some anti-spam service may be identifying some Beeper users). They can certainly escalate with protocol changes, but they still have to contend w…

Priority? Half the company is on vacation right now!

Hah, that's true. Good strategic timing on Beeper's part I suppose.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#392

Post by 43920 »

rezonant wrote: post #333
mngdtt wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user, I am very well served by remote attestation when it is used to stop cheaters in videogames or spammers in messaging platforms.

This assumes that all Beeper Mini users are spam, and that's a weird take. More charitably, perhaps you are saying spam will increase over previous levels. From what I understand, Apple does not have any spam prevention technologies in Messages at all, neither for incoming iMessages, nor for SMS messages-- so the only thing keeping your iMessage conversations free of them is the obscurity of the protocol. Perhaps the…

When you get an iMessage from a new contact, there's a "report junk" option; I'm assuming Apple does some kind of spam detection with that (ie if a particular Apple ID gets enough reports, it gets blocked). I've never seen any public documentation of it though.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#393

Post by rezonant »

lolinder wrote: post #378
rezonant wrote: post #313

I think this is kinda technically a win for Beeper. I would've expected another 100% lockout to be Apple's priority. They were instead only able to block 5%, which sounds like a heuristic being applied, and possibly not even an intentional block of Beeper (in the sense that some anti-spam service may be identifying some Beeper users). They can certainly escalate with protocol changes, but they still have to contend w…

> They can certainly escalate with protocol changes, but they still have to contend with older Macs, iPhones and iPads which are out of the support window losing access This is what people were saying before Apple cut Beeper off the first time. It would be great if there was just one mistake that they made and fixed, but I'm not holding my breath.

Well they didn't cut off Beeper in the way that would block access to older Apple devices. It seems likely that they found a pattern of access performed (or looked at the identifying information provided) by Beeper in order to target it specifically from the server side.

Those were not protocol changes. The iMessage protocol remains unchanged as far as I know. What I'm referring to above is changing the protocol and updating all clients to use the new protocol so that Beeper is left catching up. This could involve adding new DRM mechanisms or even adding cryptographic remote attestation requirements.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#394

Post by ethanbond »

makeitdouble wrote: post #371
ethanbond wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care about it because lack of iMessage is still a very good heuristic for spam. Not perfect anymore, but I reckon this will make it much worse.

Your advice was "There are plenty of cross-platform things out there. Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp", but you don't seem happy to take it and move away from iMessage either. This tension is at the center of the it all, and why Beeper Mini exists in the first place.

What? I pay for iMessage. You’re just arguing for the right to use products for free, and in Beeper’s case to create monetized products that use others’ products for free.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#395

Post by quadrifoliate »

shreyansh_k wrote: post #31

This seems to be Beeper's insincere attempt at dressing up their grievances to appear as if they were in advantage of the [Apple's] customer. Apple has made it clear that they won't bring iMessage to Android. People who choose to invest in Android phones know they won't get access to iMessage. It seems a bit entitled behaviour for someone to feel like Apple should be forced to bring iMessage to Android for any reason…

There are reports of kids being bullied (this [1] is an example from a Tell HN post), but I have anecdotally heard similar cases because they were "different" for having a "non-blue bubble" phone.

When there is broad agreement that apps like Tiktok and Instagram are toxic for teenagers, I have no idea why this aspect of Apple's lock-in hasn't received as much attention. It's way more serious than just some users wanting blue bubbles when your applications are common enough that they can cause social isolation and bullying in schools.

----------------------------------------

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35014499

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#396

Post by dann0 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #236
the_gastropod wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though you'll have to enlighten me what exactly it is they are stealing from Apple since Apple doesn't charge money for iMessage for there to be any theft or loss of revenue for them. Unless your definition of theft is "YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A CAR?!" Apple doesn't charge money for iMessage in much the same way Microsoft doesn't charge money for MS Paint. iMessage is included as part of an Apple hardware purchase. R…

>Apple's device sales subsidize the cost Apple pays to run this system. And Beeper bought and paid for the Apple devices which they use to route iMessage. What's the problem? Looks fair and square to me. Apple is legally allowed to try to block me for breaking their ToS, but legally, I bought the device, I can do whatever I want with it since it's my property now, including trying to route iMessage on my device and m…

They didn’t buy hardware to make Beeper Mini work. They are using an exploit in the protocols to make this work.

Be honest, if Apple was the party taking someone else’s property without permission, and then selling it for their own gain, would you still be defending this? I wager you wouldn’t.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#397

Post by rezonant »

8note wrote: post #381
Terretta wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you want Apple to tell iPhone users whether their messages to someone are being recorded by that person's telco and made available to other plan holders on that phone plan? How do you want Apple to indicate if this chat participant is costing you money by the message or free? Everyone's concerned about teens. Presumably teens know that T-Mobile and the other carriers give the family plan adults the ability to…

Did you get this before? All your messages have been recorded by the government, since the government has been collecting all push notifications on iPhones, and iMessage runs over push notifications

Actually no, the end to end encryption on iMessage is envelopes inside the push notifications. The message content is not readable, even if you intercept APNs messages.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#398

Post by vachina »

rpmisms wrote: post #377
JoblessWonder wrote: post #122

As I mentioned in the previous discussion[1], users are going to have to put up with the system going down... and I just don't see that happening. From the article: "It was losing messages during the outage and never being entirely certain they had been sent or received. There was a gathering on Saturday, and she had to double-check with a couple people about the details after showing up inadvertently early at the wr…

Doesn't bother me at all. I'm ok with losing a text or two to help bring regulatory pressure against Apple to un-wall the garden so I can use it again.

> I'm ok with losing a text or two

That’s the whole point. You’re using it for non-critical things.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#399

Post by zem »

rezonant wrote: post #313

I think this is kinda technically a win for Beeper. I would've expected another 100% lockout to be Apple's priority. They were instead only able to block 5%, which sounds like a heuristic being applied, and possibly not even an intentional block of Beeper (in the sense that some anti-spam service may be identifying some Beeper users). They can certainly escalate with protocol changes, but they still have to contend w…

i believe that thus far it's a win for apple - all they need to do is introduce the perception that beeper is not 100% reliable, which is the kiss of death for something as potentially important as a messaging service.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#400

Post by saintfire »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #195
NettleBurr wrote: post #28

>Apple on Wednesday appeared to have blocked what Beeper described as "~5% of Beeper Mini users" from accessing iMessages >Apple previously issued a (somewhat uncommon) statement about Beeper's iMessage access, stating that it "took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage." Citing privacy, security, and spam concerns, Apple stated it would "c…

> Migicovsky previously denied to Ars that Beeper used "fake credentials" As far as I know (I could be wrong), in order to log in + auth to Apple's various protocols that are involved to make iMessage work, you need a valid Apple ID and some sort of valid hardware ID. If you don't have either of those, how would you be talking to Apple's services? If their POST /login requires email + password + valid registered seri…

AFAIK, and I could be wrong, beeper mini registers a new HWID with apple for each phone. Which is why they thought it was unpatchable, at first, as they would need to determine which phone is in fact an iPhone.
Post reply on HN