- Nothing Chats, a rival to apps like Beeper and AirMessage, advertised itself as a secure platform for sending messages to iMessage users.
- However, less than 24 hours after its launch, investigations into the app revealed that Nothing Chats logged every message in plain text and stored unencrypted data, including text messages, images, videos, and more, making it a significant privacy and security risk.
- The company removed the app from the Play Store following these complaints, citing “several bugs” that need fixing.
This imploded so quickly I’m impressed
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Giving your iCloud credentials to a third party is already sketchy. It gives them the ability to read your messages, documents, health records, etc.
Nothing / Sunbird basically said “trust me bro, we’re super secure.” Then they did this right out of the gate.
What a bunch of morons.
Beefytootz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I wholeheartedly agree with you, but in today’s world, that doesn’t matter to most people. I work in banking and the amount of people who willingly give their whole ass banking information to third parties is insane to me. I’m not talking like just their debit card number or their account and routing numbers, like legitimately their online banking sign in info, and they don’t see any potential risk at all
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
It doesn’t help that banks are normalizing this.
I recently began changing banks. To authorize a transfer from one to the other, my only option was to login via a popup. No place to specify account details just “log into your account to give us permissions”. Fortunately the new bank is competent so I did it from that side, but it is still normalized insanity
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 11 months ago
IMHO, the big fuck up is on the business side of the fence. Their product’s success rides on Apple not sicking their giant legal team on them. They needed to play this carefully. AKA, they needed to live up to the security promises.
Now they’re in the press for being an iMessage security vulnerability, and security is something Apple spends a LOT of marketing money on.
Apple is going to want to protect that image, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they come for Sunbird in the coming weeks.
They played this fast and loose, and it will probably cost them.
AnActOfCreation@programming.dev 11 months ago
I used to use Mint until I did some looking into Plaid. They present a login screen that looks like your bank and you assume they’re doing some kind of OAuth. Nope they’re just taking your full banking credentials and you have to hope they’re safe. I think Plaid is a ticking time bomb. When it gets hacked a lot of people will be in trouble.
TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
I think there is an importance nuance: it’s not that most people don’t care about privacy, it’s that they don’t realized that they in fact do.
If they ever get bitten in the ass caused by privacy issues, they are likely to share their outrage, justifiably. But yeah, most people don’t realize how important privacy is or what a lack of privacy actually implies…
deafboy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s hard to train people not to shoot themselves in the foot when their own bank is providing free ammo.
My bank sent me an email this year that literally said Take our security awareness quiz and win an iphone. Click here!
Then there was one time some lady has called, claiming she has an offer from my bank, but needs to verify MY identity first… After contacting the support, I was assured the call was legit. The lady is selling insurance on behalf of the bank. Her number was supposed to be on the list of the official partners, which it wasn’t. When I’ve asked about caller ID spoofing, they’ve assured me they take security seriously, and are working on a solution. Untill then, I shlould rely on the list…
All of that is still a progress though, because you’ll never gues what was the official way to top up my paypal account ~10 years back. Giving my full internet banking credentials to some shady payment gateway. I’ve never noped the fuck out of a website so fast…
Gamoc@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Hmm, tell me more about this…ass banking…
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yup, and in any saner world this sort of thing would sink Nothing as a viable and serious option for a phone OEM. If they are willing to get behind such garbage ideas what else are they doing that hasn’t been dragged kicking and screaming into the light yet.
daqqad@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think very few Android users are actively part of Apple ecosystem. These are just blank accounts they create to show up in a different color on ios messages. I can give you my apple password. I created it when I was briefly issued a Mac at work 10 years ago and never used it since.
decisivelyhoodnoises@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Yes but these blank accounts will cease to be blank after these users start having conversations which use the middleman. And the middleman will have access to them…
Pika@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I actually try my best to avoid being part of that ecosystem, partially due to the incompatibilities and also partially due to the hostility that Apple users tend to have in that system torwards outsiders.
I’m the same way with my credentials lol
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 11 months ago
My guess is this feature isn’t targeting Android users. It’s targeting iOS users in the US that are due for a phone upgrade.
“Blue bubbles” is one of the reasons people stick with the platform in the states. And saying your Android phone supports that could allow you to tap into a much larger market in the US. Apple controls more than half of the smartphone market in the states.
fushuan@lemm.ee 11 months ago
What? Why? Why would you ever trust apple with such private information?
vox@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
apple health/apple watch
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Apple’s health app is basically a platform that can store and unify data from the Apple Watch, and other iOS compatible biometric devices for blood pressure, diabetes, weight, etc.
It can also download your electronic medical records from hospitals and can locally consolidate your hospital’s data with the data you’ve collected. Like your hospital’s medical records app, you can either store an encrypted copy of all this data locally, or you can save an encrypted copy on iCloud. Your choice.
IMHO, the health app is particularly useful in places like the US. The US is supposed to have accessible and interoperable electronic medical records, but it’s kind of a shit show. That data can be hard to collect, consolidate, and parse.
I’ve had some very serious medical issues that resulted in complex hospitalizations and treatment regimens, and I’ve found the app VERY helpful. It’s allowed me and my doctor to work through past treatments and nail down medications and dosages that would get me out of the hospital and not prolong a stay.
All in all, medical records and biometric monitors are a fragmented cluster fuck. Especially in the dates. Apple health tries to clean that shit up, and in the process, entice people to spend $400 on a smart watch.