- Nothing Chats, a rival to apps like Beeper and AirMessage, advertised itself as a secure platform for sending messages to iMessage users.
- However, less than 24 hours after its launch, investigations into the app revealed that Nothing Chats logged every message in plain text and stored unencrypted data, including text messages, images, videos, and more, making it a significant privacy and security risk.
- The company removed the app from the Play Store following these complaints, citing “several bugs” that need fixing.
This imploded so quickly I’m impressed
I think they actually got more press for fucking it up than launching it.
Can confirm, I never heard of them before this post.
“That’s nothing, hold my beer!”
-Elon Musk, probably
Clearly the issue is that piss poor security practices hate free speech.
We hear enough about Musk. There’s no need to bring him up where it’s not relevant.
What crackhead thought it would be a good idea to store all of that unencrypted?
The same crackhead that thought it was a smart idea to build a business around giving iCloud credentials to a middle man.
Insert Bilbo “after all, why shouldn’t I” meme.
The company behind the chat software, so these guys
Are there plans for a desktop client?
Anybody with a browser is going to be able to use Sunbird. The messages will synchronize. A big challenge has been synchronizing without them storing the data but we got it right. The web app will synchronize with the Sunbird app. Bottom line… Got a browser? You will be able to use Sunbird.
They already can go to hell.
The frantic fumbling to find whichever bloody tab on which bloody window is making the chime is really something I can do without. And when I DO ignore it, I’m somehow at fault.
I mean they can mostly go to hell by stating
The Sunbird servers do not store user data promoting a safe, secure, and private messaging environment. With end-to-end encrypted, confidential messaging, Sunbird is fully secure and completely private.
And then literally storing unencrypted user data on their servers, doing the exact opposite of their claims.
This whole company/product comes off as a shitty cash grab from idiot techbros with little knowledge of software. Apple is going to eat them alive once the litigation starts.
I mean it’s Carl Pei, right? He’s always done stuff to get attention his products one way or another.
All Pei did was put a Nothing skin on Sunbird. It was Sunbird that didn’t encrypt the comms.
That said, Pei was so damn thirsty for marketing attention that Nothing obviously didn’t fully vet the security around Sunbird’s product.
He should have choose a better product. Is Beeper better than Sunbird?
Bro, Pei Wei had this BOGO deal. I would eat them almost everyday, except one visit got me more food than I could finish in a day.
Those drunken noodles.
Those firecracker chicken.
Mmm.
Haven’t been since they removed the deal, lol.
This is one of the many reasons I don’t like Nothing. They are willing to put users at risk just so they can sell a few more phones.
Let me tell you Nothings strategy:
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Make an extract clone of the iPhone and put some gimmick lights on it to get attention.
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Make some airpod clones but make them see through to again attract attention
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Try to get iMessage working on Nothing 2 (screw you if you’re on Nothing 1, Apple style) to reinforce the impression you’re using an iPhone.
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If successful, price the Nothing 3 even higher to make it seem premium even though it’s nothing special at all.
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Bring features to the Nothing 3, that the Nothing 2 and Nothing 1 will never get, even though there is no reason not to give it to them too.
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Repeat for Nothing 5 and every other Nothing ever. And eventually reach iPhone pricing.
In short, they are using their users just to get popular, become like Apple and get rich. Only to screw you over and make future phones super expensive.
Much like One Plus did. First you position yourself as flagship killer, and once you get a loyal following and deals with mobile carriers then you push the price sky high and give your supporters the middle finger.
Anyone who buys Nothing is a fool.
- Do some YouTube content as the CEO that makes you look like the nice underdog.
Isn’t Pete Lau the CEO of Nothing? He did the same thing with OnePlus. At least I don’t think they didn’t do invites for Nothing.
Carl Pei is the CEO of Nothing
Sorry, I mixed them up, Pete Lau was also one of the big hats at OnePlus. I’m not sure what his title was, then. Oh, I checked up on it; Lau and Pei co-founded OnePlus, Pei was the CEO of OnePlus, but left OnePlus to found Nothing, which he is now the CEO of, leaving Pete Lau as the CEO of OnePlus.
Nothing is a clone of OnePlus… repeating the same strategy of OnePlus… destined to the same fate as OnePlus.
Being a mildly successful phone manufacturer?
Going from a sensibly priced, consumer-first, “flagship killer” phone to just another flagship phone with flagship prices
Precisely.
Despite that, I have a Nothing Phone 1 with LineageOS and I think it’s great. The iPhone like design is actually one of the reasons I bought it. Price is also very good for the hardware. What else they’re doing is nothing I care about.
Well the shape of actually the best thing about it. Apple really hit on a winner with that design and the corner radius they use. It’s very pleasing to the eye. Whereas Android phones tend to have sharper corners, for whatever reason.
Whereas Android phones tend to have sharper corners, for whatever reason.
Because Apple has design patents on those corners. Samsung lost a lawsuit about it and almost had to pay out a billion dollars.
Wow that is crazy! How can anyone patent a corner? What next? Patent the square?
That judgement should be thrown out along with the judge who made it!
I’d like to see if Apple sue Nothing because I think they literally traced an iPhone on paper and then added gimmick lights. Even the lights look like an apple logo
Did patents actually did 1 good thing?
Good old fashioned enshitification.
I came to the OnePlus bandwagon late and now I know why my experience was so substandard even though so many people had talked them up. I was looking at the Nothing Phone and beginning to consider it because I bought a Pixel I regret and now I think I’ll just stick with the phone that’s paid for because they all suck. I miss my BlackJack II, Sidekick, and even my G1.
Yes, very sad when happened to One Plus but it was the plan all along. It just shows you that they know what consumers want, especially the really-into-android guys like us, yet when they get what they want in sales and brand, then they drop all that and give us the same slop as everyone else
As a three time OnePlus customer I don’t blame them. They were a decent deal each time I opted for them, but I feel no loyalty to them or any other brand I’ve had in-between OnePlus phones.
Like with any corporation, nobody at the company cares about your loyalty as an individual.
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Really? Nobody did an arch review for this and figured this was going to be caught/uncovered/talked about day one?
I imagine Nothing’s Infosec team must be terrible or non-existent. Any half decent infosec team would immediately raise red flags and pull in the legal dept as soon as they heard “let’s let our customers give their iCloud credentials to a small vendor we just hired.”
Any half decent infosec team would immediately
… be over-ridden by a Chief Product Officer who says ‘[something something] for now’ .
I don’t even exist in the same world as the word “infosec” and even I shudder at the phrase “plain text”
And yet you post this in plain text. Interesting.
/s
This sounded like a disaster when it was first revealed they were basically relaying messages through some Macs they had lying around the office.
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Lesson learned. Cover up your tracks like Apple before you steal sensitive information.
This is just fodder for the “android is insecure” crowd.
Yeah, the apps on iPhones never steal or mishandle your data. /s
I love how the marketing for this was absolutely everywhere. It wasn’t anything new. It just tried and failed to reinvent the wheel that was matrix bridges.
And even Matrix Bridges aren’t perfect either
LMAO, who would have thunk it? That was a very desperate attempt to make some sales. I noped it the second I learnt that they were using a mac mini somewhere to log people’s iclouds. That was the most pathetic thing I have seen in a while.
Nog defending this practice at all, but a fun little fact is that if you get a Mac instance on AWS (and other cloud providers) It’s literally a normal mac mini in a rack enclosure.
Just watched a SomeOrdinaryGamers video about this a couple days ago. Muta gave Nothing too much credit saying the texts etc would probably be encrypted. But lol “plain text”. They crazy for that.
Só, sketchy idea, took around 2 days to be completely dismantled?
There’s Nothing to see here.
Ah yes, what we need is another chat app, but this time with bundled badly done social media and cloud storage.
Yep, decentralized is the key.
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It used to be a decentralized social app + a chat app. But now you can switch between them.
Nothing pulls its iMessage app from the Play Store following privacy disaster
i.e. something pulled its iMessage app from the Play Store following privacy disaster
