Update 12/11/23 : Beeper Mini once again act to direct iMessages , as announce in aBeeper blog post . Phone number registration does not work yet ( they ’re work on it ) so users have to lumber in to an Apple ID , and messages must be sent and received via that Apple ID rather than your phone number . Beeper is still not relaying messages to a Mac , and only stores the mandate token . In summation , Beeper has made their service free to employ for the time being .
Last week , we told you about Beeper Mini , an Android app that sends bonafide iMessages . Unlike other serve that route your messages to a Mac server farm ( which requires them to have your login token ) , Beeper claimed to have reverse - engineered Apple ’s iMessage routing system and could trick the servers into think that a message was coming from a genuine Apple product .
Like other service of process , Beeper does n’t get iCloud login details and does n’t be given its own server — rather the team reversed - engineered iMessage and tricked Apple ’s server into remember that messages from Beeper Mini were actually message from Messages on an iPhone . It work great , and the caller was quite confident that it was on the ripe side of the police and that Apple could n’t easily freeze Beeper Mini without also blocking iMessages sent from iPhones . Beeper was so confident , it went so far as to open up - beginning much of its computer code .
It appear that confidence was misplaced , as it acquire Apple all of two days to in effect shut the app down . As reported on TechCruch , messages on Beeper Mini started getting error that record “ failed to lookup on server : lookup petition time out , ” on Saturday . When TechCrunch asked Beeper CEO Eric Migikovsky whether Apple had found a agency to discover the connectedness with their app , he replied , “ Yes , all datum indicates that . ” Then Apple reassert that it had indeed closed the loophole Beeper was using and will do it again if Beeper finds another :
At Apple , we build our products and services with industry - lead privacy and security measure technologies design to give users command of their data and keep personal information safe . We took footfall to protect our users by blocking technique that exploit simulated certificate so as to gain ground memory access to iMessage . These techniques posed significant endangerment to user security system and privacy , including the electric potential for metadata photo and enabling unwanted messages , spam , and phishing attacks . We will proceed to make updates in the time to come to protect our user .
Two days later , on December 11 , Beeper Mini released an update that re - enable iMessage functionality , with a caveat : You have to sign in with an Apple ID and send and receive messages via that address , as sound number enrollment is not work ( Beeper is working on a fix ) . The overhaul has also been made costless for the sentence being . We expect Apple to attempt to find a path to close it down again .
This bring us full circle , again , to those seeking to somehow enable iMessages on Android phones . Either you put your privacy and security at hazard ( as in therecent Nothing Chats / Sunbird catastrophe ) or you bank on a machine politician that Apple is almost certainly going to keep out down immediately .
If you want a better texting experience between your iPhone and those with Android speech sound , you ’re going to have to wait untilRCS comes to Apple deviceslater next twelvemonth .
