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 sounded like a disaster when it was first revealed they were basically relaying messages through some Macs they had lying around the office.
It sounded like a quick way of making your irrelevant company show up in headlines, and it worked.
This “use a Mac somewhere as a proxy for iMessage” thing has existed at least two times before, and failed for the exact same reasons.