Beeper Mini Says of Continued Outages: ‘Apple is Penalizing Their Own Customers’

Beeper Mini is once again having connectivity issues with its iMessage-compatible Android app. Last night, the app stopped working for 5% of its users, and the developer said Apple was “deliberately blocking iMessages from being delivered.”

Beeper Mini told affected users that uninstalling and reinstalling the app could act as a workaround until a fix was released. While issues with the Beeper Clous service have been fixed, some Beeper Mini users report that are still experiencing connectivity issues.

Beeper developers call Apple’s continuing efforts to block that app “super annoying,” complaining that Apple is penalizing their own customers as well as Android users in search of encrypted chats. However, Apple has made it clear that it will do its best to block Beeper Mini.

We realize how incredibly inconvenient this is for you. It's super annoying that Apple is penalizing their own customers and Android users who just want secure and encrypted chats.

We understand if you choose to uninstall Beeper Mini at this time. Hope to have you back soon.— Beeper (@onbeeper) December 14, 2023

Beeper Mini originally launched last week and promised to provide Android users with a full iMessage experience. The developers reverse-engineered iMessage to develop the app, which registers Android users’ phone numbers with Apple’s iMessage servers.

The app did what it promised to, bringing the coveted “blue bubbles” to text conversations between iPhone and Android users, allowing read receipts, reactions, typing indicators, and other iMessage features to work as they should. However, Apple moved quickly to put a stop to it.

Three days after the Beeper Mini launch, the app ceased working. Apple confirmed that it had shut down the app.

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.Apple

In a blog post, Beeper Mini’s development team criticized Apple for its decision, claiming that iPhone customers have “less security and privacy than before” due to the lack of encrypted messages between iPhone and Android devices.

We deeply object to the allegation that Beeper Mini ‘poses significant risks to user security and privacy’. This is completely untrue. As we explained above, the opposite is actually true. Beeper Mini increases the security and privacy of both Android and iPhone customers. To prove this, we published a detailed blog post about how the app keeps data secure and private. Beeper Mini is end-to-end encrypted.Beeper Mini

While Beeper developers did find a way to get the Android app working again, the new version of the app requires users to sign in with an Apple ID, a requirement that was not required with the previous version of the app, which could register with a phone number the same way an iPhone can.

With that change, the new version also only supports sending and receiving messages via an email address, not a phone number, as Apple successfully blocked the backdoor the app had used to register Android numbers as faux Apple users.

While Beeper Mini developers will likely find a way to restore the app to full functionality, it is also likely that Apple will find a way to block it once again.