- Nothing Chats, a rival to apps like Beeper and AirMessage, advertised itself as a secure platform for sending messages to iMessage users.
- However, less than 24 hours after its launch, investigations into the app revealed that Nothing Chats logged every message in plain text and stored unencrypted data, including text messages, images, videos, and more, making it a significant privacy and security risk.
- The company removed the app from the Play Store following these complaints, citing “several bugs” that need fixing.
What? Why? Why would you ever trust apple with such private information?
apple health/apple watch
Apple’s health app is basically a platform that can store and unify data from the Apple Watch, and other iOS compatible biometric devices for blood pressure, diabetes, weight, etc.
It can also download your electronic medical records from hospitals and can locally consolidate your hospital’s data with the data you’ve collected. Like your hospital’s medical records app, you can either store an encrypted copy of all this data locally, or you can save an encrypted copy on iCloud. Your choice.
IMHO, the health app is particularly useful in places like the US. The US is supposed to have accessible and interoperable electronic medical records, but it’s kind of a shit show. That data can be hard to collect, consolidate, and parse.
I’ve had some very serious medical issues that resulted in complex hospitalizations and treatment regimens, and I’ve found the app VERY helpful. It’s allowed me and my doctor to work through past treatments and nail down medications and dosages that would get me out of the hospital and not prolong a stay.
All in all, medical records and biometric monitors are a fragmented cluster fuck. Especially in the dates. Apple health tries to clean that shit up, and in the process, entice people to spend $400 on a smart watch.