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They shared information with large customers with NDA. They were old school telecom — very tight. Everything traversed their network. It was a bonkers architec
by Spooky23 2y ago
They shared information with large customers with NDA. They were old school telecom — very tight.
Everything traversed their network. It was a bonkers architecture that would not fly today. The other thing about that obscurity is it enabled all sorts of weird use cases. Because the devices were identified to the BlackBerry network, you could message without user assignment.
It was common for corporate and political people to use them for unaccountable, compartmentalized communications. You could build ad hoc networks of people without there a record of who was who, and periodically reshuffle the devices to add and remove people. It was basically Nextel DirectConnect for texting / “the wire” for corporate people.
- dec0dedab0de 2y agoI think most corporate blackberries were tied to an enterprise server that tracked everything they did.
- Hilift 2y agoIndeed. The FBI made a lot of cases with that. It wasn't unusual for a corporate user to not know that all of the texts, contacts, and numbers called were available centrally.
- nothercastle 2y agoI assume they are on iMessage as well at some level are they not?
- Barbing 2y agoIf any party receiving an iMessage uses iCloud backup, it should be available to the US govt one way or another. Am I correct that parties who don’t use backup are indeed messaging “entirely” privately, barring Harvest Now, Decrypt Later?
- ThomasBb 2y agoiMessage is actually post-quantum prepared - see https://security.apple.com/blog/imessage-pq3/ https://security.apple.com/blog/imessage-pq3/
- fdb345 2y agoNot to my knowledge. iMessage keys never leave your device until you back them up to iCloud.
- gotohelldang 2y ago[flagged]
- smileybarry 2y agoI remember how it needed specific telecom support to work at all, whereas iPhone needed carrier help for a subset of things like APNS. So for most of BlackBerry’s life none of the carriers here supported running one on their network.
- miki123211 2y ago> you could message without user assignment > It was basically Nextel DirectConnect for texting / “the wire” for corporate people What does "without user assignment" mean here. Not an American and not that familiar with the American telecoms environment of the early 2000s, so while those names ring a bell (no pun intended), I think the comparisons escape me.
- Spooky23 2y agoMost services are tied to a user account or phone number. PIN messages were associated with a phone. Easy to swap sims and phones to build ad hoc groups. Nextel was a little different… their walkie talkie function was not tappable. They became the phone of choice for street level dealers among others.