Apple confirms it blocked Beeper Mini from its iMessage service citing security risks

A few days after the Beeper Mini app launched a way for users to send blue-bubble iMessages directly from their Android iPhone knockoffs, Apple shut down the app’s access to its iMessage messaging service, citing security risks.
David Pierce for The Verge:
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Apple senior PR manager Nadine Haija said in a statement…
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. We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage. 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.
[So], Apple did in fact shut down Beeper Mini, which uses a custom-built service to connect to iMessage through Apple’s own push notification service — all iMessage messages travel over this protocol, which Beeper effectively intercepts and delivers to your device. To do so, Beeper had to convince Apple’s servers that it was pinging the notification protocols from a genuine Apple device, when it obviously wasn’t.

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MacDailyNews Take: Apple built, maintains, and owns the iMessage instant messaging service for users of Apple devices. If you want to use Apple’s iMessage instant messaging service, get real Apple devices capable of running Apple’s Messages app, not half-assed insecure knockoffs peddled to the cheap and/or ignorant by South Korean dishwasher makers and worse.
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