Tag: imessage

Senator Elizabeth Warren Targets Apple for Shutting Out Beeper

Sorry Senator, nobody is stopping anyone from using alternative messaging apps such as Signal, WhatsApp, Messenger (which apparently had just been rebuilt using Signal’s end to end secure messaging protocol), Telegram, Snapchat, or any other cross platform ones that are available on both the App Store and Google Play. Shutting out Beeper from iMessage isn’t anti-competitive.

It may be inconvenient that many Americans are on iMessage while their Android friends and colleagues are being shown as unsecured green bubbles but the rest of the world don’t have this problem because they use other messaging apps.

There is no antitrust problem here. Just because people refuse to use clearly available alternatives doesn’t make it an antitrust problem.

If the Senator thinks iOS and Android users should be able to communicate securely without having to download other apps, maybe the Senator should consider finding out why the RCS protocol is not inherently secure? Google only recently made RCS secure on Android and it’s had a complicated past.

Will the Senator admonish Microsoft for not allowing Google Docs users to collaborate directly on Office docs and vice versa, or am I giving her a terrible idea?

Nothing is Bringing iMessage to its Android Phone

This is also called introducing MITM (man in the middle) attack vector into your Apple ID and iCloud accounts thereby opening up potential breaches to your account.

“Would you like to compromise your account privacy security? Tap here to let your account be accessed by some random authentication server not maintained nor authorized by Apple somewhere”

iMessage Activation Issues

Today I found out that iMessage on my iPhone had stopped working. Last time I used iMessage was last weekend but yesterday I had taken out the SIM card from the phone for the first time in months and did not realize until today that iMessage was turned off. Now I’m having problems with iMessage activation.

Ever since iOS 5 came out, I’ve been using iMessage in place of SMS whenever possible. I registered my iPad and iPhone 3GS using the same email address and through a little bit of trickery, avoided registering my phone number for it. In other words, iMessage on my iPhone works only through email and that’s how I want it.

Another reason why I don’t want to register my phone number to iMessage is because I’m using Axis, an Indonesian carrier which isn’t registered with Apple as its iPhone partner. In most cases, only approved carriers can have their customers registered to iMessage and FaceTime. There is an unexplained anomaly that allows Indosat numbers to be accepted by Apple’s activation server for iMessage and FaceTime despite the network not selling iPhones.

Trying to register to FaceTime or iMessage with a number from a non-partner carrier will result in your phone credits being drained without your knowledge because it uses background SMS process to send, acknowledge, and receive activation requests.

If the phone fails to receive an acknowledgement from the activation server, it will keep sending background text commands over and over again through the SMS channel using international rates. Fastest way to lose money through your phone.

How did I enable iMessage without a phone number back in October? What I did was I took out the SIM card from the phone, put it in Airplane mode and turned on iMessage. I can’t remember what the precise steps were (it was back in October 2011), but after entering my Apple ID email, the service accepted it and activated iMessage for me. I then added my iCloud email as well.

Things went fine until yesterday when I couldn’t send any text over iMessage. Earlier today I checked the Settings app and iMessage was set to off. When I turned it back on, it was waiting for activation.

After a few seconds, the settings for Messages ended up as above, signifying that the two emails I used (Apple ID email and iCloud email) for iMessage had been verified and approved but the status on screen was still waiting for activation. So I took out the SIM card, went into Airplane mode, reconnected to wifi and yes, I turned iMessage off and on again. I also repeated the process after turning the iPhone off and on again.

A few hours later it still won’t show up as activated despite me having already used iMessage to chat with a couple of friends (see the image above). It’s obvious that it’s trying to complete the activation for my phone number but I don’t want that to happen. If iPad and iPod touch can have iMessage activated only using email, why not the iPhone? It also worked before, why not now?

I’m still trying to figure out how to stop iMessage from trying to rob me of my money by sending multiple activation request to Apple’s servers. I don’t want to have to turn off iMessage but I don’t want it to waste my money either.

Clearly there is a way to activate iMessage on iPhone without the phone number (I did it last year) but I must have missed a step or two in the process. Anyone know or have any idea what I missed? I need to get iMessage working again on my 3GS without the phone number. No, I’m not considering a switch to a number from an approved network.