Meet Beeper Mini - Finally, get blue bubbles on Android 💙
blog.beeper.com
🎉 We’re thrilled to launch Beeper Mini: our beautiful new Android app to message with iPhones as a legit blue bubble. Download it today on Google Play! No waitlist, no ads ever, and free for 7 days.

All messages are end to end encrypted. Also you don’t need an Apple account and it connects directly to Apple servers.

  • will_a113@lemmy.mlEnglish
    45·
    11 months ago

    Their “how it works” blog article is worth a read - they’re using a blackbox reverse engineering of the protocol and re-implementing it natively in the app, so there are no man-in-the-middle servers. Impressive software engineering for sure.

      • will_a113@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5·
        11 months ago

        Yup, the PyPush python-based proof-of-concept can run pretty much anywhere there’s python.

      • shoe@beehaw.org
        11·
        11 months ago

        I’m aware regular Beeper can be self-hosted, but Beeper Mini can too? Is there any more information on this or is that the “if you have the knowledge” part?

        • biscuitswalrus@aussie.zone
          5·
          11 months ago

          The mini version doesn’t need hosting, it doesn’t have a proxy middle man. A 16yo kid reverse engineered the protocol and then got contracted by beeper to implement it as beeper mini. It’s a client directly connecting to apple like imessage native.

          Will it break? I’d argue if the cost of breaking it in engineer time is worth doing to Apple, yes. All they’d have to do is roll their own crypto and reverse engineering that might be impossible. Probably easier ways to break it but then maybe it turns into a cat and mouse game.

          Legally it’s hard to say if it’s OK too, the end user is likely fine, but the developer especially being contacted may not be since to reverse engineer it could be breaking terms of service or licensing clauses though I’m not really sure what kind of damages could be claimed. To reverse engineer they had to use the original on jailbroken iphones to go through the engineering discovery.

          Anyway the point is, it’s not going through beeper or anywhere other than Apple. So there’s no component to host. It’s different to beeper.

            • biscuitswalrus@aussie.zone
              2·
              11 months ago

              Hmm you could be right. Keeping old protocols running for legacy compatibility reasons could in this case keep the solution working for some time.

          • Bene7rddso@feddit.de
            1·
            11 months ago

            what kind of damages could be claimed.

            According to Apple users, the color of their bubble has a lot of value

        • will_a113@lemmy.mlEnglish
          4·
          11 months ago

          I don’t know about the app itself, but the blog article links to the PyPush python-based proof-of-concept, which you can run pretty much anywhere.

    • Bri Guy @sopuli.xyzEnglish
      6·
      11 months ago

      huh, interesting. so from a security perspective is there any other concern with this protocol? at least they’re not using a mac relay server like Nothing Chats was

  • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
    211·
    11 months ago

    I’m not American and I don’t see how having iMessage on Android is worth the $2 monthly.

    In my whole life I never knew a single person that was reachable only on iMessage or that was so stubborn to ignore messages on any other platform

  • Papamousse@beehaw.org
    11·
    11 months ago

    But why the obsession with iMessage and apple product?!? We don’t care about the colour of the bubble!!!

  • .....@lemmy.ml
    85·
    11 months ago

    A lot of work, data scrapping and security issue just for a pin ?

    Seriously ?

    What the point, except to simulate the possession of an iPhone to someone who should be a stranger for you or at least physically far from you ?

    I clearly don’t get it.

    Scam interest after a sim swapping attacks ? The goal, need to know it !!

    • shoe@beehaw.org
      13·
      11 months ago

      I take it you’re not from the US 😅 texting is still the default here, and since apple refuses to open up iMessage and has not yet implemented RCS, Cross-Platform communication is pretty shitty. People get excluded from group chats because even a single user on a different platform will set it back to MMS

      • Evkob@lemmy.ca
        14·
        11 months ago

        Yeah I’ve been excluded from work group chats on two separate occasions because they used iMessage and considering another platform was just entirely off the table.

        Although to be honest, I consider being excluded from work group chats to be one of the best features of my phone!

        • Apollo2323@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
          6·
          11 months ago

          Lol me too but I just had some friends that refuse to answer messages if its not on iMessage. I really hate Apple for doing this and I hope they get forced to open the protocol.

    • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
      31·
      11 months ago

      iMessage is pretty great to use honestly. Supports encryption, Tapbacks, read receipts, sharing any file type (not just pictures and video). RCS isn’t implemented in iOS yet and on launch won’t support encryption (supposedly Google is working to add it to the RCS standard, not just Google’s fork, now that Apple announced future support for the standard).