Nothing Chats Beta app pulled out of Play Store after privacy issues reported

Nothing Chats Beta app pulled out of Play Store after privacy issues reported،

Days after announcing the RCS-based Nothing Chats beta and rolling it out yesterday, the company pulled the app from the Google Play Store, saying the app was delaying its launch until further notice. Nothing could exterminate several bugs discovered in the beta, however, it had to be removed from the Play Store after a major privacy issue was reported.

For the uninitiated, Nothing Phone 2 users can use iMessage-like RCS to communicate with other users. RCS is a type of communication protocol that allows sending text, videos, photos, stickers, etc., unlike SMS. With Nothing Chats Beta, the RCS-based app uses a platform provided by Sunbird which, in turn, requires users to log in to their iCloud accounts.

A Texts.com blog went viral, prompting Nothing to remove the app from the Play Store. It turns out that the beta app doesn’t support end-to-end encryption, as mentioned in its FAQ.

Sunbird has access to all messages sent and received through the app. They do it by abusing @getsentrywhich is used to monitor errors.

But Sunbird logs the messages, pretending they are errors.

Here is part of the requests (img 1, 3) and their entire “message” (img 2, 4) pic.twitter.com/pzwwQVWfOb

– Dylan Roussel (@evowizz) November 18, 2023

To explain it better, you need to sign in to your iCloud account on Sunbird to use Nothing Chats Beta. Sunbird does not natively support encryption, which means intruders can exploit its servers to read all your sent and received text because it is plain text. Having encrypted text makes it difficult for intruders to evaluate the content of these messages, making them much more secure.

As for Sunbird, it abuses a feature called Gentry which monitors for errors. It turns out that the platform logs all messages sent and received, disguising them as errors. To put it simply, any messages you exchange on Sunbird (and Nothing Chats Beta) remain on their servers unencrypted, which is a major privacy issue. Additionally, your iCloud ID is also associated with messages that can be used to attack and access your contacts, notes, photos, videos and much more.

This then shows how Nothing Chats Beta could have been a privacy issue if it had remained on the Play Store, available for users to download.

Apple announced native support for RCS when communicating with Android phones and the feature will arrive in 2024. It turns out that the current privacy issue will not pose problems in Apple’s decisions given that it attempts to preempt the EU DMA’s potential decision to set RCS as default. in the 27 EU member countries if iMessage is declared as a “guardian” application.

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