A single app to manage all chats: now it is possible, with the opening of Beeper to the public, but doubts about security still need to be resolved
A few hours after the beginning of the era ofinteroperability for WhatsApp chatshere comes some news that will please those who use many apps at the same time to stay in touch with all their friends, relatives and colleagues: Beeper and now available for everyone Android, iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Windows, Linux and ChromeOS users.
Beeper is an instant messaging platform that revolutionizes the way we interact with different chat applications by combining them all into a single interface. Originally developed by Beeper Inc and acquired a few days ago by Automatic (the company that develops WordPress, the software behind millions of sites currently online), Beeper tries to offer a unified experience to billions of potential users.
What is Beeper?
Beeper was born in 2020 under the name of NovaChat, created by Eric Migicovsky, Brad Murray and Tulir Asokan. The basic idea is simple but innovative: to allow users to manage multiple messaging services, and therefore all chats, from a single application.
To do this, Beeper is built on top of the protocol Matrix and the application Elementwhich allow interoperability and security (at least on paper) of conversations.
For many months Beeper was only available to a few people: there was one very long waiting list to download and try the app. Now, however, Automattic has made it available to everyone for free.
How does it work?
The integration of different messaging services into Beeper is done via “bridges” which connect the different platforms to the central core of Beeper, managed via the Matrix open-source protocol. In practice, the various chat platforms send messages to Beeper, which then forwards them to users.
This means that users can send and receive messages from any of the supported platforms without having to change apps or compromise the security of their data.
Every message comes end-to-end encryptedensuring that only the sender and recipient can read the content.
What is Beeper for?
Beeper’s main goal is to eliminate fragmentation in the field of digital communications. Thanks to Beeper, users no longer have to jump from one app to another to stay in touch with friends, family or colleagues who use different services: a WhatsApp user can chat with someone from Telegram, X, Signal or any other app. The supported platforms, in fact, are all the main ones:
- Messenger
- Telegram
- Signal
- X/Twitter
- Slack
- Google Messages
- Google Chat
- Discord
- IRC
- Matrix
In theory (but theory will need to be verified by practice), is also a great solution for those looking to maintain a higher privacy and security in your communications, thanks to robust encryption and the fact that all messages are protected from prying eyes.
Recently, Beeper made headlines for the introduction of Beeper Minian app that allowed Android users to send messages via iMessage, Apple’s messaging service, traditionally only available to iOS users.
Apple tried to block Beeper Mini, sparking fierce controversy, but the app was discontinued anyway in view of Beeper’s availability to everyone, which makes the mini version essentially useless.
Is Beeper safe?
The real doubt that keeps many from using Beeper, or other similar solutions, is that of chat security. In fact, each platform/app has its own encryption standard (more or less secure) which is different from that of other apps. But it is, in any case, always about encryption.”end-to-end“.
This means that the cryptographic keys necessary to decipher the messages are kept on the phones, and not in the cloud, but inside the apps. Make two different apps communicate via the “bridge” by Beeper, therefore, means “open” at least partially this safety barrier. In particular, it is not yet clear whether the Beeper app is capable of doing so or not read the decrypted messages when switching between chat apps.
