Hacker News Reader

Comment by sprite | Hacker News Reader

Did you get permission from Apple to connect to their servers? Google Play does not allow apps to connect to 3rd party APIs without consent.

The relevant policy can be found at: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

"We don’t allow apps that interfere with, disrupt, damage, or access in an unauthorized manner the user’s device, other devices or computers, servers, networks, application programming interfaces (APIs), or services, including but not limited to other apps on the device, any Google service, or an authorized carrier’s network."

From what I understand your app connects to APNS without permission from Apple.

I have personally had my Google Play Developer account banned for making an app that connected to a 3rd party service

View on HN

I'm surprised Apple hasn't cut them off yet. They must not be able to for some legacy reason. I suspect the only way to cut them off would be to cut off all the older phones like iPhone 3GS as well.

>the iMessage protocol and encryption have been reverse engineered by jjtech, a security researcher. Leveraging this research, Beeper Mini implements the iMessage protocol locally within the app. All messages are sent and received by Beeper Mini Android app directly to Apple’s servers. The encryption keys needed to encrypt these messages never leave your phone. Neither Beeper, Apple, nor anyone except the intended recipients can read your messages or attachments. Beeper does not have access to your Apple credentials.

>We built Beeper Mini by analyzing the traffic sent between the native iMessage app and Apple’s servers, and rebuilding our own app that sends the same requests and understands the same responses.

https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

Is this specifically unauthorized, though? The user is permitted to use Apple's services, and Apple has, as far as I know, not announced that third party apps may not use their services.

If Apple files a complaint with Google it will definitely get taken down under this clause, so I think the only way it will stay up is if Apple doesn’t care.

With the trouble Apple goes through to ensure you are accessing APNS from an Apple device including obfuscating the signing algorithm and requiring unique hardware identifiers I think it’s safe to assume they don’t want 3rd parties accessing their services.

Even Signal pitches a fit if you use a third-party app with their servers. It's a common (and unfortunate) practice.

> It's a common (and unfortunate) practice.

It would be nice if third party clients were allowed to connect, but it's totally understandable if they don't want to allow it. Servers cost money, and misbehaving client apps that you have no control over sound like a pain in the ass.

what does this mean? plenty of 3rd party signal clients exist (flare being a well-known one); signal explicitly factored out a libsignal presumably to _encourage_ this.

i’ve run multiple 3rd-party signal clients, even alongside the official apps, and never seen any problems or warnings.

[flare]: https://gitlab.com/schmiddi-on-mobile/flare

>what does this mean?

Moxie (Signal's founder) has thrown fits in the past over the existence of third-party clients using their servers: https://github.com/libresignal/libresignal/issues/37#issueco...

By calling that a “fit” it sounds like you’ve an axe to grind.

That was pretty damn polite for a heated mailing list discussion.

I use my own personal fork of the official Signal app (I absolutely despise the idea of going back to having a separate SMS app), so I do. Sort of.

> I have personally had my Google Play Developer account banned for making an app that connected to a 3rd party service.

Well what did it do with the service?

I had app that connected to the Snapchat API and let you upload photos with custom effects and photos from your photo album before that was a feature (not sure if it is today, I don't use Snapchat)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com