Earlier this week a report from Wired noted security company Cloudmark’s claim that iMessage is host to nearly a third of all mobile spam messages due in part to email addresses being attached in many cases to accounts. In our coverage we noted that you can manually report such messages in addition to certain workarounds to avoid being bothered.
BlackBerry, however, is taking this report as an opportunity to remind you it still has a messaging service, BlackBerry Messenger, which it says is a more secure alternative to iMessage. In a recent blog post (via BGR), the handset maker goes on to list five reasons why its messaging platform is better than iMessage:
Despite drastically smaller smartphones sales compared to the years before iOS and Android started to dominate the market, BlackBerry continues to push its BBM service as an alternative, secure messaging platform.
BBM gives you control. There’s no spam on BBM due to its self-policing system. Users are in control of their contact list and there is no way to send a message without being contacts. You can’t control someone showing up to your house, but you don’t have to open the door. With BBM someone can request to be added to your list, but you don’t have to accept their invite.
BBM Protected ups the security ante. Privacy is the main issue with iMessage and spam. BBM protects your privacy by only allowing users to send messages to approved contacts. Our secure enterprise messaging service, BBM Protected, takes it a step further by adding an advanced layer of encryption. This ensures your messages aren’t vulnerable to spying or hacking while being transmitted.
BBM empowers you to protect yourself from unsolicited messages. On the rare chance that you get spam or an unwanted ad, you only need to block the person from your contact list and refuse further attempts to reach you in the future.
BBM’s anti-spam features work on any platform. BBM is structured so that each user has a unique PIN that’s unique to him or her, regardless of what device is used. Here’s the added bonus: BBM is a true multi-platform network that allows you to securely message users on BlackBerry, iOS, Windows Phone and Android. That’s virtually 100% of all smartphones and tablets out there today. iMessage is only available on Apple products.
Last fall the company released BlackBerry Messenger for iPhone and Android and boasted 5 million downloads within 8 hours of release. BlackBerry has continued to update its BBM platform with new versions since then.
If spam plagued your iMessage account would you consider moving to BBM? For me, it would be a massive task moving all of my contacts to another service at this point.
