Isn't this one of them?
A security hole existed that permitted Beeper to pretend to be your Apple device. In this case, it was being used for non-nefarious purposes, but that doesn't mean everyone would. Apple's fixing that hole seems in-line with your desired "privacy and security".
_An_ Apple device. Not _your_ Apple device.
Again, how do we not classify that as a security issue?
What is stopping me from buying a second-hand old iPhone and doing this without Beeper?
In that scenario, you're still using the official client, which Apple presumably knows isn't silently siphoning messages off to somewhere else. You're on official hardware with an official client.
Is what you are asking this?
1. I install Beeper.
2. I log in to Beeper with my Apple ID, for the explicit purpose of accessing my own iMessage data.
3. ...
4. Gah! How could Beeper access my iMessage data even though I installed and authorized it just so it could access my iMessage data?
Facebook and LinkedIn used to try to get people to hand over their email credentials so they could "help you find your friends on Facebook"; people were correctly skeptical then. Giving my Apple ID to a third-party seems insane, given what can be done with it, and I'd imagine Apple sees it the same way.
That's fair. You'd be happy to learn that literally no one is forcing you to hand over your Apple ID to Beeper. Your approach is very good for your account safety, but you don't need to keep other people safe from themselves.
Do you have similar concerns when people use non-Google-approved email clients to use Gmail, or alternative YouTube clients, or Signal/Telegram forks?
Perhaps you think HN should ban alternative clients or weird web browsers too. Too bad a lot of people think interoperating clients are important or we would be left with the Web Integrity crap to "keep us safe".
If they ask for credentials, absolutely. Google has both an OAuth flow and the ability to generate app-specific passwords (which correctly have very limited abilities) so I never have to pass over the real creds.
I have never given my Gmail credentials to Apple, but I get my mail just fine.
If the Beeper service is totally fine, and you mind their auth methodology, perhaps you should complain about Apple not providing better iMessage auth options.
Instead, you complain about users being able to give their own data to an app they chose to install.
I specifically mentioned the other approach; if your email client doesn't implement the OAuth style approach, you can generate an app password. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/11/beeper-mini-is-back-in-ope... appears to indicate more than that, though.
> In tests, signing in with our Apple ID generated an Apple prompt that noted our ID was being used to sign in with a device “near Los Angeles, CA” (where we are not located.)
I don’t believe so. Beeper Mini uses Apple’s protocols the same way the native iMessage uses it; they didn’t exploit a security hole (unless you classify the device faking part as a security hole—I don’t). They maintain the E2EE flow.
I don't see how you could describe that as anything other than a security hole.
I think they have another primary product of the same name that operates this way, but Beeper Mini never sends your credentials off anywhere other than Apple’s servers [0][1].
> To work around this limitation, we built Beeper Push Notification service (BPNs). BPNs connects to Apple’s servers on your behalf when Beeper Mini Android app isn’t running. We can do this while preserving user privacy thanks to Apple separating the credentials needed to connect to APNs to send and receive content (the “push” credentials) and the keys needed to encrypt and decrypt messages (the “identity” keys). Push credentials can be shared securely with the Beeper Push Notification service, and BPNs can connect to APNs on your behalf. Whenever BPNs receives an encrypted message that it won’t be able to decrypt, it simply disconnects from APNs and sends an FCM push notification to wake up the Android app, which then connects to APNs, downloads, decrypts and processes the incoming message. BPNs can only tell when a new message is waiting for you - it does not have credentials to see or do anything else.
Bepper still connects on your behalf to run notifications while the app is not running.
You shouldn't defend something that's inherently consumer hostile just because it happens to be for something you like.
To Godwin a bit, I'd treat "we should make the trains to Auschwitz run more on time" differently depending on if it's being proposed by the German government in 1942 or the Polish government in 2023.