Apple Cuts off Beeper Mini’s Access in iMessage

Beeper, the startup that reverse-engineered iMessage to bring blue bubble texts to Android users, is experiencing an outage. Apple Inc says it shut down third-party applications that enabled Android devices to use the iMessage service to communicate with iPhone users. The iPhone maker says it took steps to protect users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage. It added that these techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks.