2023-12-11 13:10:00
Little by little, we see the Apple preparing for a new fight, this time against Beeper — the startup responsible for Beeper Miniwhich made headlines last week for enabling the iMessage on Android devices.
As we can see, a few days after the Beeper team announced the new tool, Apple managed to stop its operation — something that the startup’s CEO, Eric Migicovskybelieved it to be impossible without breaking iMessage itself — to protect users’ security, according to it.
According to a statement (our free translation below) from the company supplied to Bloombergthe company made it clear that it will not cease its efforts to stop the operation of such tools:
At Apple, we build our products and services with industry-leading privacy and security technologies designed to give users control over their data and keep personal information safe. We take steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials to gain access to iMessage. These techniques pose significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and the possibility of unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks. We will continue to make updates in the future to protect our users.
Beeper claims that its process works without compromising encryption and, therefore, users’ privacy — highlighting that “no one but you can read the content of your messages”. However, Apple cannot verify this, so it is their moral mission to stop the service from working.
Beeper’s position and FaceTime support
Since Apple “broke” the Beeper Mini, its developers have been working to get it working again. Last Saturday (12/9), before Apple’s official response, the company said that iMessage was working again in the app Beeper Cloud and that a fix for Beeper Mini was in the works.
Our fix for the Beeper Mini is still in progress. It’s very close and it’s just a matter of a little more time and effort.
In the meantime, we’ve unregistered your phone numbers from iMessage so your friends can still text you. Sorry, you’re temporarily a green balloon again ???? Annoyingly, the iPhone Messages app “remembers” that you were a blue balloon for 6 to 24 hours before switching back to SMS, so it’s possible that some messages may not be delivered during that time .
Additionally, we are extending all 7-day trials for an additional week.
We just want to thank you for joining us on this busy day (week). We feel terrible about the important messages you may have missed today because our iMessage connection stopped working. Our sincere apologies for this.
Tomorrow is a new day. Forward!
Even after the statement released by Apple, Migicovsky told the The Verge that Beeper will continue to try to provide its service to users — however, he changed his position on sharing the service code with the Cupertino giant, so that Apple “could be sure of the security practices” of the Beeper Mini.
His argument is that SMS is “so fundamentally insecure” that virtually any other service would be an improvement.
Finally, he revealed that his team “still has some ideas” for the Beeper Mini — one of them being FaceTime supportaccording to listed in the roadmap of future resources planned by the startup.
They promise support for both audio and video calls, as well as other features such as blocked contact lists, text search, an interface for the best foldable phones and the ability to schedule messages.
Over time, there are plans for the Beeper Mini to support SMS and messengers like WhatsApp and Signal, as well as a host of other chat networks.
US senator supports Beeper
Of course, to be able to advance in its work and develop so many features, Beeper will need more than engineering resources to overcome the barriers imposed by Apple. In other words, they will also need support — and a strong name in the United States has just spoken out in favor of the startup’s work.
According to noticed by TechCrunchUS Senator Elizabeth Warren supported the startup in a publication on X (formerly Twitter) and questioned why Apple “restricted a competitor”.
Chatting across different platforms should be easy and secure.
This indicates, of course, that Apple’s action caught the attention of legislators — who, in fact, have been dissatisfied with the company’s attitude towards stifling competition for a long time.
We can only continue to follow the developments of this…
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