Nothing has pulled the beta for its new messaging app, Nothing Chats, from the Play Retailer only a day after its launch, and says it’s delaying the launch “until further notice.” The corporate touted the Sunbird-based Nothing Chats as the reply to the longstanding “Android versus Apple” texting woes, with help for each RCS and iMessage to bridge the hole. However since its announcement, a rising variety of critics have voiced considerations over the dangers that workarounds like this convey, arguing that Nothing Chats is an inherently much less safe messaging choice.
We have eliminated the Nothing Chats beta from the Play Retailer and shall be delaying the launch till additional discover to work with Sunbird to repair a number of bugs.
We apologise for the delay and can do proper by our customers.
— Nothing (@nothing) November 18, 2023
In a teardown of the app, 9to5google identified that Nothing Chats doesn’t have end-to-end encryption, and located that attachments despatched by different customers might simply be accessed in plain textual content. The findings added help to considerations voiced by others that Sunbird makes use of HTTP as an alternative of HTTPS. Kishan Bagaria, founding father of Texts.com, known as it out as “extremely insecure” and mentioned additional investigation from his staff confirmed “all outgoing texts are being leaked to a sentry server in plaintext.”
On X, Nothing did not straight deal with the privateness points however mentioned it is working with Sunbird to “fix several bugs” and “will do right by our users.” Nothing Chats was introduced on November 14, and the beta hit the Play Retailer on Friday.