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Comment by alexose | Hacker News Reader

Cool project! Though, the OSX requirement makes its utility pretty limited.

Could someone host iMessage as a service without being sued into oblivion?

Hi, op here, I'm actually working on a hosted solution right now making use of a set of physical Macs and fast user switching. Hoping to have something to show for it in the next several weeks!

I don't see Apple being happy with that

I think this is one of those projects we all think about doing, then realize an Apple ID is way too critical to a Mac / iPhone user's security (remote wipe anyone?) to let a third party authenticate with it.

It would be really handy as something I could run on my own mac.

Yeah, the service will essentially be a man in the middle on the account, and I believe it will be very important to communicate that with users. I'll think about releasing a standalone "server" app based on the code although I've already built something somewhat similar (although even "clunkier" if you can imagine that) here: https://github.com/CamHenlin/imessageservice

> Yeah, the service will essentially be a man in the middle on the account, and I believe it will be very important to communicate that with users.

No, it will be very important not to do it, because you are knowingly busting security open on Apple IDs with your service and think that educating users is the best way to mitigate that. We all know most of your users won't know any better. The better way to mitigate it is to not accept Apple IDs in the first place.

If you launch that service, I would feel obligated to tip off the iCloud folks that you're knowingly compromising Apple IDs. That isn't because I want to see you fail, but because you are compromising Apple IDs and your users are caught in the middle.

This is an idea you should let go. I know that sucks to hear.

I generally hate posts that are just a +1 to something, but I feel your point is important enough that it needs echoing. I as well will do the same as you if I see a service like this.

Yeah a server app would be cool.

Would be nice if users could give you(r service) access to only the imessage key in their icloud keychain.

The protocol isn't open source. It's a cli layer over the messages app so at this point there's no way to "host" it somewhere.

you could host it by using a ton of macs :P

I've previously ran OSX in a VM to send automated alerts over iMessage. It worked rather well.

I've found during my own research that running an OS X VM sending out iMessages for too long will eventually get itself and its host machine blacklisted from iCloud services for a few days. Not sure how they detect the host but I can cause it consistently. I think the VM is blacklisted by its bad SN

Blacklisting/intentional degradation happens with volume sending on a real mac mini too.

Do you have any documentation of precisely when service starts being cut off?

No, sorry; I stopped using iMessage because it wasn't worthwhile to integrate with a system that didn't approve of my use. But when you get cut off, there's no explicit indication, the messages are just not delivered, I think I stopped getting indications that people were on iMessage (the green? bubbles) as well.

Yeah that's what I've come up with in my testing as well. It's kind of surprising that there isn't more research into it. Just all of the sudden iMessages stop sending, then a few days later they magically start sending again

Sounds like your OS is... a POS!

I never actually experienced any rate limiting/blacklisting issues while I ran it. I even tested spamming messages to myself, it worked but upset my iOS notifications a fair bit maybe I just got lucky.

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