Beeper reverse-engineered iMessage to bring blue bubble texts to Android users

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• gregorum@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  i had no idea that having green chat bubbles upset people so much.

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  • pizza_the_hutt@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The issue isn’t so much the message color. It’s the ability to send videos that aren’t potato quality and other media.

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    • gregorum@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      oh, can’t android users receive high-quality videos and photos? after 16 years of smartphones, you’d think they’d have that figured out…

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    • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Which should go away anyway once Apple bakes in RCS support

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  • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’ve seen a lot of people complain online about getting dropped by a tinder date/etc because they swapped numbers and the other person realized they didn’t have an iPhone from the green text. Probably best not to date someone who would drop you over that, but there’s a weird elitism over blue/green texts.

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    • Exusia@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Attempting to get a date in the current US scene was hard enough without this petty bullshit. While it was certainly disheartening to see another one slip away, knowing I was dodging a bullet was worth the time. I did enjoy (only once) getting “ugh green bubbles? Srs?” And sliding back “yeah sorry I have a Fold#, iPhones r for brokies” and blocking the contact

      (People are free to own iPhone and you’re free to make your own descicions or debate the merits of android/iphone, I am more just intolerant of the fan elitism - not iPhone owners in general, hope you have a nice day)

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    • Nacktmull@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Weird, is that an excursively US American thing? I am European and have never experienced “phone racism”.

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    • Scubus@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Nah bro, if they bought an iPhone that means I can’t trust them with money. Screw that noise

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    • Toes@ani.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’ve never heard of that, that’s kinda hilarious and really helps them dodge a bullet.

      Apple has spent a significant amount of effort over creating a sense of elitism for using its products but that’s largely unique to the western world. Most of the world uses android devices by far.

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  • turkalino@lemmy.yachts ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    In the US, every millenial is a communist until a green bubble shows up in the group chat… then the poverty jokes commence

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    • GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Millennials are pushing 40

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    • eager_eagle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      gen z*

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    • JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Dumb kids are always dumb. And cruel.

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  • nolannice@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think it’s hated because they’re synonymous with broken group chats and low res photos. Hopefully EU forcing rss adoption fixes these instead of having to download an app to ‘fit in’.

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    • gregorum@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      why should the EU have anything to do with who “fits in”?

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  • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’m absolutely blown away by the number of people who actually think this is about bubble colors…

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    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Well it is because that bubble color on Apple means issues for people on Apple devices.

      I have millenial family members, they hear it from their peers. Probably even worse in younger folks.

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  • Yoz@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    People are dumb af

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  • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s all the other features in iMessage that android users “ruin” in group chats. Things like read receipts, typing indicators, reactions, animated/spoiler text messages, sending media in full quality, etc… A single android user is enough to downgrade an entire group chat, so apple users tend to be a little bit resentful.

    It’d be a little bit like if one person on a Discord server disabled all the fun parts of Discord, and it killed the functionality for everyone on that server. Now nobody in the server can add fun little reactions to messages, or start threads, or send embedded gifs. All because that one person decided they didn’t like it.

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    • PobrePerformer@lemmy.pt ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      All because that one person decided they didn’t like it.

      More like “all because Discord decided to remove those things from anyone not using Windows”

      Nothing in this scenario is in the users hands, it’s all Apple, what any given user likes or want makes no difference.

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    • ItsMeSpez@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This shit seems like a perfect target for an antitrust suit, no?

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  • cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Doesn’t bother me at all.

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• urist@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s not just about the color of the bubbles. I have Wi-Fi at work but poor cell signal. Because I have an iPhone and my husband has an android, we have to use another chat client to text while I’m at work. No cell signal means no texting android phones for me, because I can only text people with iMessage over Wi-Fi.

  Plus, remember: kids have phones. They do get bullied over chat bubble colors, just like I got bullied for wearing clothes from Walmart in school. It doesn’t have to be this way, it’s Apple’s fault for making iMessage a walled garden.

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  • kia@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Is it even a garden though? I don’t see any benefit in using it over something like Signal other than it coming pre-installed on your phone.

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    • inverted_deflector@startrek.website ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Sure, but they wont. The insidious thing about iMessenger is that it isnt iChat. It is the apple default text messaging app. Which is good because it means that all your messages are in one place, and you dont have to try to convince your older family member to install a 3rd party chat app. You just have a chat app. This tricks users not into thinking that texting is just better on apple.

      But its bad because it only works between other apple products and users. This is objectively Apple’s shortcoming, however there are enough iPhones in the wild and enough people in the US who defaulted to just hitting the sms/mms icon instead of downloading a chat app that the odd man out might be the android user. And it’s not just about the green bubble being green. If you invite an a green bubble to a group text then all your rich chat messenger features go away and it turns into an MMS thread. Which is objectively bad.

      But yes they could just download and use whatsapp,line, telegram, signal, facebook messenger(and in the early days things like aim/yim/msn) But they dont. The fact is their default messenger app works, and it works well with most people they talk to so the problem is the green text.

      It’s especially silly when you consider the “there’s an app for that” generation of user and so many things are apps but they refuse to engage on other chat channels. People download different apps to get dates, the navigate, to browse websites that shouldnt even be apps, to order food, order groceries, order taxi’s, but a chat app just to talk with you? ehhhhhhhhh.

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    • urist@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You know honestly, now that I’ve typed that I’m not sure. I don’t do a lot of texting audio snippets or other stuff other people do, so maybe, maybe not.

      The problem is, I should be able to text people at default without worrying I have cell signal or if group chats are going to work correctly, instead of needing to ask people what 3rd party chat service they prefer.

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  • Toes@ani.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    In some cases you can manually select the type of service on your phone. Try changing your phone manually to 3g and see if that helps. I find it works well in areas where I have poor LTE/5G coverage.

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• RubberElectrons@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Before anyone tries, Beeper mini on the play store won’t function without official Google play services. I emailed support to ask if there was another way I could pay for the subscription, succinctly, “no plans for that”.

  Bummer.

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  • gogosempai@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They should add login and subscription handling on their website as well like so many do, with 30% off on the subscription fee because there’d be no Google tax.

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  • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Is it just you can’t pay for the subscription or the notification process (GCM) doesn’t work?

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    • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Looks like both. Beeper mini (and a lot of other apps) ask the play store if the user paid for the app, which is a heavily pretexts part of goggles services… so using non-Google services means I can’t sign into beeper mini at all. They can’t prove I paid for it, especially since I don’t have a Google account at all.

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  • notsofunnycomment@mander.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What OS are you on?

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    • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Calyx, which uses microG.

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• Mandy@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why is this even a need to be solved? are people that stupidly superficial about the color of y fucking message bubble? (im not american but where im from literally nobody wiorth their salt gives a hoot)

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  • NickwithaC@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    are people that stupidly superficial

    Yes.

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    • Mandy@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      understandable i suppose, a good deterrent tho if they speak about it openly

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  • Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    are people that stupidly superficial about the color of y fucking message bubble?

    Yes, apparently.

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  • Yoz@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Lol the world we live in

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• Lantern@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Assuming that it’s actually reverse engineered, this is great news. If not, there’s a massive lawsuit brewing.

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  • macgyver@federation.red ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • gogosempai@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      github.com/JJTech0130/pypush

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    • NinjaTeensy@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They did for Beeper Mini but not for the original Beeper (now called Beeper Cloud) which uses Mac’s as a server.

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• felixwhynot@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Seems like Beeper will see the cleartext of the replies, though, since they send the notifications via BPNs, right?

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  • LinuxSBC@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    No, they know that a message has been received, but the phone is what decrypts the message. Beeper can’t see it.

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  • Rootiest@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    No, with this new app messages are encrypted between you and Apple’s iMessage servers using iMessage encryption more or less the same way an iPhone does.

    The push service simply notifies your device it has a message waiting, no message content passes through Beeper servers.

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  • bamboo@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t know for sure, but often mobile notification protocols are more like “wake up and check your incoming messages” than “user foo says bar”. If this is true then the best they could do is collect timestamps of when you probably received messages.

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• stefenauris@pawb.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  We literally shut down another app doing this last week because it was so sketchy

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  • Zak@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The other app was running iMessage on Macs owned by the company and relaying the messages insecurely to its Android app. What we see here is a third-party implementation of the iMessage protocol running on Android devices directly, an example of adversarial interoperability.

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  • Steve@communick.news ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The article specifically address this and explained the difference.

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  • LinuxSBC@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    No. This is much more impressive, useful, secure, and sustainable because it’s totally different internally.

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  • KrummsHairyBalls@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You literally didn’t read before speaking.

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• pastabatman@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It still needs Apple’s servers, which tells me they will try and find a way to shut it down. Now that Apple is going to implement RCS, I care a lot less about this.

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  • Asudox@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • pastabatman@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t, I want modern messaging features like typing indicators, read receipts, and videos that have more than 10 pixels total

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  • poopkins@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What exactly do you mean with it requiring Apple’s servers? All of the services Beeper integrates with require it to communicate with the servers those services belong to.

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• KinNectar@kbin.run ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I really want to sign up for Beeper, but the fact I have to give them my phone number to sign up for a waitlist seemed like a red flag. How is their security profile?

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  • LWD@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • twix@infosec.pub ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They do have to run servers in order to keep the service alive. If you want to run this stuff yourself on your own server that’s possible using PyPush. The reason they have to run those servers for you is to keep the notification service alive.

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    • stu@lemmy.pit.ninja ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      By that logic, there’s nothing guaranteeing iMessage on iPhones is secure or private either because it’s closed source. If you don’t want to trust Beeper mini, you’ll be free to run their iMessage bridge on your own Matrix stack when they open source it at some point, which they’re promising to do (and you still won’t know that Apple isn’t scraping your messages on the iOS side). When I decide to trust a company, it’s because I look at what they’re transparently communicating to their end users. Every indication is that they are trying to get out of the middle of handling encrypted messages. Their first move to make this happen was allowing people to self host their own Beeper bridges (which you can still do with Beeper Cloud if you prefer and you will know that your messages are always encrypted within the Beeper infrastructure). They aren’t going to release the source for their client ever because that’s the only way they make any money.

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    • Rootiest@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Notice how in the article they say “we’re not the middle man… Any more”? That’s because, up until now, Beeper has been working on a system where they operate as a middle man for your data.

      To be fair they never claimed otherwise and all of the code for the bridges are open-sourced and can be run on your own servers so that those servers you control (as opposed to Beeper-owned servers) act as a “middle man” and none of your messages need be trusted to a 3rd party.

      To put it simply: only the actual bridge on Beeper Cloud has access to unencrypted messages and you do have the option to run the bridge yourself while continuing to use the Beeper app. You can use as many or as few self-hosted bridges as you’d like.

      A few bridges are preconfigured for self-hosting with just a couple of clicks for free through fly.io here

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  • jamon@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This post is referring to beeper mini. It’s confusing naming, but that’s not the same as beeper(cloud service). Beeper mini is available to everyone on the play store and is not a cloud service. You just get it, login to Google (to pay the subscription cost) and it works. No invite needed

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  • Merlin404@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Want a invite code? Its just to prevent people from mass signing up

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    • KinNectar@kbin.run ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      @Merlin404

      Can I get a code, please please?

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  • LinuxSBC@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s to prevent multiple entries by one person. Their security is very good, with audits and their products being largely open source (for this, PyPush. For Beeper Cloud, their Synapse fork and their bridges.). Only the parts that don’t matter to security (the clients, mostly) are closed source.

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• Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Are their messages going to show blue to iMessage users or something? Cuz I don’t see why you’d need to reverse engineer that otherwise.

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  • yukijoou@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    afaik, their while thing is that they do everything on-device, so your device is the only one with access to your messages

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

  ---

  What may hold it at bay is the Digital Markets App (DMA), a law in Europe that says big tech companies will have to have an interoperable interface for their chat networks.

  In addition, Beeper uses certificate pinning, which makes network traffic analysis more difficult to perform in order to verify its claims.

  To work around this limitation, the team built BPNs to connect to Apple’s servers on the user’s behalf when the app isn’t running.

  When the Android phone’s battery died, however, the texts reverted to green bubbles and did not make it to Beeper’s app — they went to Google Messages instead.

  The company is also hoping to gain trust by building in public, with 50-plus projects that it’s published to GitHub with the open source code that goes into the app.

  Founded in 2020, Beeper comes from former Y Combinator partner Eric Migicovsky and CTO Brad Murray, previously of wholesale marketplace startup Faire and Fitbit.

  ---

  The original article contains 1,306 words, the summary contains 158 words. Saved 88%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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• Fades@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  In exchange for security loss, is it really worth it?

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