Sunbird shuts down its iMessage app for Android 'for now' amid 'security concerns'

Submitted ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨flop_leash_973@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://9to5google.com/2023/11/21/sunbird-shut-down-android-security-concerns/

Whats sad is it doesn’t even take much knowledge of technology to know the whole of Sunbirds “product” was a terrible idea even outside of security concerns.

“Hey! I’ve got a brilliant idea for a product that absolutely could not fail!, lets reverse engineer one of the prime services of one of the most protectionist and litigious companies in the world and publicly advertise and try to sell it to their competition and potential users as some sort of magic compatibility layer”! What could possibly go wrong?

It was a worse idea than Dolphin thinking they were going to get away with trying to monetize their Nintendo emulator.

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Comments

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SSUPII@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Dolphin didn’t attempt to monetize the emulator, it was being released for free as it has always been.

What are you talking about?

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- flop_leash_973@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Ah, my mistake, I could have swore they had said somewhere they were going to charge for it.
  
  Still, putting it up on Steam even for free when talking about something related to Nintendo seems like wishful thinking.
  
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  - GrayBoltWolf@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Just to note, the issue with Dolphin was that they had copyrighted decryption keys in their source code, which is why they were pulled from Steam.
    
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OrangeCorvus@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
But Nothing CEO told me there are no privacy concerns, everything is stored on my device. Could it have been a marketing trick? I thought we should trust CEO-bros blindly.

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- Teknikal@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The guys just a conartist one of the reasons I bought the Nothing phone 1 was the remarks no other phone would be on the horizon for a long time until they nailed it.
  
  About 2 months later phone 2 is the only one the company cares about and every phone 1 update seems buggier and more rushed than the last.
  
  I expect the same will happen to anyone with phone 2 when the inevitably spring a 3 out of nowhere.
  
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Alchemy@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m very not into tech or savvy, but this was a glaring red flag to me. Can’t believe they got as far as they did with the idea.

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chloyster@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you’re talking about the whole thing with dolphin almost being released on steam, it wasn’t going to cost money. They weren’t trying to monetize. They were literally just trying to have the download available on steam

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- flop_leash_973@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Ah, my mistake, I could have swore they had said somewhere they were going to charge for it.
  
  Still, putting it up on Steam even for free when talking about something related to Nintendo seems like wishful thinking.
  
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jcrabapple@infosec.pub ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Isn’t it interesting how when you knowingly release an insecure product, people have security concerns.

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doublejay1999@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Does anyone mod reposts ? This must have been posted 4 or 5 times now

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metaphortune@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve said for the longest time, Apple could put iMessage on Android, charge for it, and make plenty of money (mine included). So I was very intrigued by Sunbird! But I took one look at Sunbird’s website and knew something was wrong. Maybe it was the lack of a clear idea for how they’ll make money or that they didn’t initially disclose the technology behind it.

Suffice to say: I am not surprised by this.

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improvisedbuttplug@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Good

It was a pretty bad idea, not only a privacy risk for users but for anyone those users interact with. You no longer get the guarantee that your iMessages are end to end encrypted since some dummy could have literally signed up for a service that puts a man in the middle for everyone you communicate with.

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CaptDust@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s crazy that they let Nothing move forward and announce their integration while sunbird had to know this was an open risk. what a joke.

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LWD@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
[deleted]
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- sam@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Its gotta be accessible somehow. What difference does it make if its accessible via the web or not?
  
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