this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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45
Sunbird is shutting down its iMessage app for Android (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
5 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

• Sunbird, the iMessage app for Android, has temporarily shut down due to "security concerns" surrounding its end-to-end encryption. • Reports suggest that Sunbird may not have actually provided the promised level of encryption and was storing data externally. • The app was recently pulled from the Google Play Store and the company has yet to comment on the shutdown.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tbf I was surprised that Nothing didn't use Beeper. As I recall, that's the most popular "iMessage on Android" app.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

deleted

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, but at least they've proven to be worthy of trust (contribute a lot to FOSS, offer ways to host your own iMessage server, warn about the insecurity). Sunbird has done the opposite.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

deleted

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Sunbird launched in 2022 as a messaging app that attempts to put the blue versus green bubble battle to rest.

It has only been available to those who sign up for its waitlist, touting numerous privacy features, like end-to-end encryption, no message data collection, and no ads.

Last week, Sunbird partnered with Nothing, the phone brand owned by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, on the launch of Nothing Chats.

The Sunbird-powered messaging service is supposed to let owners of the Phone 2 send texts via iMessage, but it was pulled from the Google Play Store just one day after its launch.

Android developer Dylan Roussel came to similar conclusions and also found Sunbird stores thousands of media files on the cloud service Firebase.

That means Sunbird’s claims that it doesn’t store data on its own servers are only partially true, as the company appears to be just shipping the information off externally.

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