Apple said it has as blocked Beeper Mini, the iMessage app for Android citing security concerns. In a statement to The Verge, Apple said “We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage.”
Beeper Mini was recently announced as an iMessage app for Android that doesn’t require users to sign in with their Apple ID nor fetch messages by running iMessage on a server like Subird. Beeper service bypasses these requirements and connects to apple servers directly by using fake credentials, as apple referred to in the statement.
In its response to Apple, Beeper posted that it stands behind the app, and insists Beeper Mini keeps messages private.
We stand behind what we've built. Beeper Mini is keeps your messages private, and boosts security compared to unencrypted SMS. For anyone who claims otherwise, we'd be happy to give our entire source code to mutually agreed upon third party to evaluate the security of our app.… pic.twitter.com/dpFBRRgJC2
— Beeper (@onbeeper) December 10, 2023
Updated @ 23:10 – 11/12/23
Beeper Mini’s developers said that they have found an updated way to bring the app back with some modifications.
The developer posted the below updates on their blog:
We even added in a few new feature improvements: chats now open at the last unread message, and we polished the video player a bit!
Four other things to note:
- The security and privacy of Beeper Mini is unchanged. It is still local, end-to-end encrypted on your device, as we described in our post.
- Phone number registration is not working yet. All users must now sign in with an AppleID. Messages will be sent and received via your email address rather than phone number. We’re currently working on a fix for this.
- We’ve made Beeper free to use. Things have been a bit chaotic, and we’re not comfortable subjecting paying users to this. As soon as things stabilize (we hope they will), we’ll look at turning on subscriptions again. If you want to keep supporting us, feel free to leave the subscription on .
- Our Play Store ranking dropped precipitously on Friday. Leaving us a nice review there would help tremendously.
It’s been an extremely busy, tiring, exciting, and eventful week. Props to the entire Beeper team for working basically 24/7 to get Beeper Mini working again. Huge thanks to you, the Beeper and broader community, for supporting us.
As updates, the new version of the app now requires users to sign in with an Apple ID, which was not needed with the prior version. All iMessages are also now sent and received through an email address rather than the phone number.
