Nothing pulled the beta version of its new messaging app, Nothing Chats, from the Play Store just one day after its launch, and says it will delay the launch “until further notice.” The company touted Sunbird-based Nothing Chats as the answer to the long-standing “Android versus Apple” texting problems, with support for both RCS and iMessage to close the gap. But since its announcement, a growing number of critics have raised concerns about the risks that come with solutions like this, arguing that Nothing Chats is an inherently less secure messaging option.
We have removed the Nothing Chats beta from the Play Store and are delaying the release until further notice to work with Sunbird to fix several bugs.
We apologize for the delay and will do the right thing for our users.
– Nothing nothing) November 18, 2023
In a teardown of the application, 9to5google noted that Nothing Chats does not have end-to-end encryption and found that attachments sent by other users could be easily accessed in plain text. The findings supported concerns expressed by others that Sunbird uses HTTP instead of HTTPS. Kishan Bagaria, founder of Texts.com, called it “extremely insecure” and said that further investigation by his team showed that “all outgoing texts are being leaked to a sentinel server in plain text.”
On Nothing Chats was announced on November 14 and the beta version hit the Play Store on Friday.
