(Credit: Joe Hindy / PCMag)
Apple appears to once again be cracking down on Beeper Mini, the app that brings iMessage to Android devices. Beeper this morning released a patch for its app after tweeting last night that Apple was "deliberately blocking" Beeper Mini, affecting around 5% of users.
The fix for Beeper Cloud, which offers a unified inbox for a variety of chat apps, started rolling out this morning around 10 a.m. ET and should take about 3.5 hours to complete. Beeper is currently testing the fix for the Beeper Mini app, it says.
"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," Beeper says.
Beeper has been playing whack-a-mole with Apple, which has vowed "to make updates in the future to protect our users.” Most recently, Beeper Mini returned as a free app, nixing a $2-per-month subscription until the service stabilizes.
"We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials to gain access to iMessage," Apple said over the weekend. "These techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks."
Apple hasn't directly addressed the most recent Beeper Mini blocks.
On Monday, Beeper responded by laying into Cupertino, calling Apple's comments "1984-esque doublespeak" while simultaneously stating that encrypting messages from Android users made iMessage more secure, not less secure.