Sunbird, the app that brings iMessage to Android, has briefly shut down the service over “safety considerations,” as first reported by 9to5Google. In a discover to customers, Sunbird says it has “determined to pause Sunbird utilization for now” whereas it investigates experiences that its messages aren’t truly end-to-end encrypted.
Sunbird launched in 2022 as a messaging app that makes an attempt to place the blue versus inexperienced bubble battle to relaxation. It has solely been out there to those that join its waitlist, touting quite a few privacy features, like end-to-end encryption, no message information assortment, and no adverts.
On the time, Nothing mentioned it needed to repair “a number of bugs” inside the app. Nonetheless, its removing from the Play Retailer got here across the identical time a post from Texts.blog revealed that messages despatched by way of Sunbird is probably not end-to-end encrypted. Android developer Dylan Roussel got here to related conclusions and in addition discovered Sunbird shops 1000’s of media recordsdata on the cloud service Firebase. Meaning Sunbird’s claims that it doesn’t retailer information on its personal servers are solely partially true, as the corporate seems to be simply delivery the knowledge off externally.
Sunbird nonetheless hasn’t commented on the app’s shutdown, however its message to customers says, “We are going to replace you once we are able to proceed.” As identified by 9to5Google, the app is now not listed on the Google Play Retailer regardless that it was out there to obtain final month, per an archived version of the page.
