Nothing Puts New iMessage For Android On Time Out Following Security Leak
Image via Nothing
Nothing flew too close to the sun with Nothing Chats, a too-good-to-be-true app designed for Android users to send messages to others as if using an iPhone. The promising tech newcomer has pulled down the app from the Google Play Store due to major privacy and security concerns.
Launched on November 17, the app gave Android users—in particular, those who owned the Nothing Phone (2)—the ability to “camouflage” themselves among iPhone users with text bubbles that appeared blue instead of green.
Powered by Sunbird Messaging, a US-based texting service specializing in web and Android messaging, Nothing Chats initially promised end-to-end encryption and assured users that messages and Apple ID credentials would be erased from the service. But Android app designer Dylan Roussel uncovered an alarming revelation—none of this was actually happening.
Roussel unveiled that every message, file, image, and even user contact information was susceptible to unauthorized access by online strangers. Startlingly, personal information from more than 2,300 users was exposed, and Roussel successfully managed to download data from one account to prove that confidential info was obtainable through this leak.
Thread time!
— Dylan Roussel (@evowizz) November 18, 2023
Summary:
- Sunbird has access to every message sent and received through the app on your device.
- All of the documents (images, videos, audios, pdfs, vCards...) sent through Nothing Chat AND Sunbird are public.
- Nothing Chats is not end-to-end encrypted.
Nothing promptly took action in response to the findings and acknowledged these privacy and security issues on X, formerly Twitter. The company said it removed the beta version of Nothing Chats from the Play Store, and now plans to address these critical bugs with Sunbird to ensure a more secure experience for users.
“We’ve removed the Nothing Chats beta from the Play Store and will be delaying the launch until further notice to work with Sunbird to fix several bugs,” the company writes. “We apologize for the delay and will do right by our users.”
If you’ve downloaded Nothing Chats, it might be a good idea to change your Apple ID password and delete the app immediately.
In closely related news, Apple has announced its intention to support a common standard known as Rich Communication Services (RCS) in the coming year. This move aims to enable iMessage-style features, like read receipts and typing indicators, between iPhone and Android users. For Android users prioritizing this added functionality, this may mean that the Nothing Chats—which has promised these capabilities—will be redundant.
On the flip side, with Apple’s RCS support, green bubbles will still show up for Android and iOS devices using RCS and SMS. In this case, Android phone owners who care about the blue VS green debate may still be allured by Nothing Chats’ claims of disguising their texts in blue.
[via Gizmodo, Digital Trends, Evening Standard, Android Central, cover image via Nothing]
This article was crafted with assistance from an AI engine, and has been manually reviewed & edited.
