Apple responds to the Beeper iMessage saga: ‘We took steps to protect our users’

I don't understand why the article writes that iMessage is the only way for encrypted messaging between Android and iOS. I can thing of several off the top of my head:

• Matrix
• Signal
• WhatsApp
• Facebook Messanger (very soon)
• Threema
• Telegram
• Viber
• Line
• Skype

And there are surly more ...

Apple protecting it's precious garden.

If only there was a secure and open standard that would work on any platform, regardless of ecosystem...

Oh well!

We took steps to protect or users by forcing them to communicate to Android phones using unencrypted channels. After all, those peasants are not iPhone users, they deserve to be spied.

our walled garden*

At Apple, we build our products and services with industry-leading privacy and security technologies designed to give users control of their data and keep personal information safe.

At Apple, we build our products and services with industry-leading vendor locking tactics to distance our brand from other lesser ones.

We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage.

We're not letting anyone breach this walled garden, but nice try.

These techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks. We will continue to make updates in the future to protect our users.

By using these tactics we can keep our users away from solutions that have any interoperability whatsoever and keep promoting decade-old features as new, as our sheep ahem user base don't know any better.

So many of these comments are pulling up the other encrypted alternatives that you can use between iPhone and other platforms. But few seem to actually be addressing the problem of actually getting other non-tech savvy people to use this stuff because they don't actually see a problem with what they have.

You may not realize it, but not everyone is thinking about whether or not their messages are encrypted. My own family looks at me like "🤨" when I try to convince them to use something encrypted, like I'm trying to hide a crime or something. And I've only gotten my parents to use other services (WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger with end to encryption turned on) by digging my heels to get them to stop using SMS. I still haven't convinced my almost 16-year-old sister (she doesn't really message me that much anyway. But she's in that phase where she thinks she's all independent, and her first places are the simple stuff she knows).

Might I add that digging your heels at every attempt for someone to use SMS isn't socially acceptable. I've only done it because they're family and I love them

Funny how the EU just recently found them to NOT be gate keepers.

Gotta protect your users from fake blue bubbles, I get it I get it

Serious question since I don't use iMessage whatsoever, what's going on with the iMessage stuff? Seems like multiple companies recently have tried to make apps that connect to iMessage, but there's nothing I've heard about Apple opening that up. Did something happen for this to suddenly pop up more frequently?

Lots of sarcastic comments in here, but Beeper’s method was to literally spoof the serial numbers and whatnot of real machines. Do people really not see how that would be a problem?

not surprising, but super disappointing. Beeper Mini was a dream come true

I think everyone saw this coming

Beeper already fixed iMessage on Beeper Cloud and is working on restoring Beeper Mini. Might take some back and forth but it still wouldn't be surprise if it makes their reimplementation more resilient to Apple tampering.

They spelled "profits" wrong.

Apart from online commentary I don't know a single person that gives a shit about this blue bubble green bubble thing. Is it really such a big thing?