It never lasted long. The Beeper Mini app, which allows Android users to support iMessage texts, was expected to run into trouble as soon as it caught Apple’s attention since it was released this week. And it gets Apple’s attention. Yesterday, the entire Beeper platform appeared to be in trouble, leading to speculation that the iPhone maker had shut down the iMessage workaround.As of this morning, Beeper Mini is Still posting on X (old Twitter) They said they were working on the outage and might have a fix, but with today’s announcement from Apple, that may all be for naught.
“We have taken steps to protect our users by blocking the use of fake credentials to access iMessage,” Apple said in a statement. “These techniques posed significant risks to our users’ security and privacy, including the potential for leaking metadata and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks. To protect our users, we We will continue to update it in the future.”
Apple hasn’t mentioned the name of the app, but given the timing of Beeper Mini’s launch and recent troubles, it stands to reason that this refers to a loophole the platform was using.
Beeper’s method, which sends a user’s texts to Apple’s servers and then to the intended recipient, was devised by high school students. Messenger wannabes don’t even need an Apple ID to access iMessage via Beeper Mini, but the Android app offered end-to-end encryption for conversations between Messenger on both operating systems.
Apple also said today that it cannot verify whether messages sent through fraudulent means disguised as valid credentials can maintain end-to-end encryption. Beeper predicted that this workaround might be phased out at some point, but it looks like the messaging disparity between Android and iOS is here to stay. At this point.