'iMessage For Android' App Sunbird Shuts Down After Revelations That It Can Access Every Message Sent

Sunbird, the ‘iMessage for Android' app that was gaining popularity after the launch of Nothing Chats, has been shut down suddenly amidst widespread privacy concerns.

What Happened: Several users who have early access to the Sunbird app have received notifications informing them that the app has been shut down "temporarily".

"We have decided to pause Sunbird usage for now while we investigate security concerns. We will update you when we are ready to proceed," Sunbird said in a notification to users.

The Sunbird app was launched in 2022 in a bid to capitalize on the "green vs blue bubble" debate between Apple Inc. AAPL users and Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL Android users. The app allowed Android users to access iMessage features without actually using an iPhone. This allowed messages from Sunbird users to show up as a regular iMessage to iPhone users.

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The app touted features like end-to-end encryption and promised privacy protection to users signing up for the service.

"Sunbird Messaging servers never store user messages, or any other personal data, ensuring safety, security and privacy," the app's website claims.

However, security researchers have discovered that contrary to its claims, Sunbird can access every message, photo, video, document, and other thing sent through the app.

So, what changed suddenly, and why did Sunbird escape scrutiny for a year? The launch of Nothing Chats brought the app into the limelight – the Carl Pei-led company launched this new messaging service based on Sunbird.

Why It Matters: After the initial hype, security researchers scrutinized the Nothing Chats app and discovered massive privacy failures.

"Texts team took a quick look at the tech behind nothing chats and found out it’s extremely insecure. It’s not even using HTTPS, credentials are sent over plaintext HTTP," said Kishan Bagaria, founder of messaging service Texts.

texts team took a quick look at the tech behind nothing chats and found out it's extremely insecure

it's not even using HTTPS, credentials are sent over plaintext HTTP

backend is running an instance of BlueBubbles, which doesn't support end-to-end encryption yet pic.twitter.com/IcWyIbKE86

— Kishan Bagaria (@KishanBagaria) November 17, 2023

Although Sunbird initially played down these findings, the app being shut down shows there is merit to the privacy concerns.

Nothing Chats has been pulled from the Google Play store, just like the Sunbird app.

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.

We apologise for the delay and will do right by our users.

— Nothing (@nothing) November 18, 2023

Image Credits – Shutterstock

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