BlackBerry yanks BBM after Android leak

BlackBerry has put its rollout of Android and iOS versions of its BBM messaging service on ice as it addresses the fallout of an unofficial version launch over the weekend.

The company said in a statement that an "unreleased" version of BBM for Android leaked onto the web ahead of the official release of the app.

It garnered some 1.1 million active users over an eight-hour period before BlackBerry decided to pull the plug, citing undisclosed "issues" that it said it was attempting to address.

"We are pausing the global roll-out of BBM for Android and iPhone," spokesman Luke Reimer said.

"Customers who have already downloaded BBM for iPhone will be able to continue to use BBM. The unreleased Android app will be disabled, and customers who downloaded it should visit www.BBM.com to register for updates on official BBM for Android availability."

Neither app is expected to see the light of day this week.

The TUAW blog described some of the issues allegedly caused by the premature Android release as being "security" in nature, but did not elaborate.

FirstPost, however, speculated that a number of fake BBM apps that appeared on the Google Play store to coincide with the timing of the official app's release may be the real reason that BlackBerry froze the Android launch.

The publication reported that many fake apps achieved "tens of thousands of downloads within a few hours", and that the content of those fake apps was unclear, exposing the lax security around app approvals in Google's ecosystem.

Most had since been pulled down, although SC Magazine spotted at least one fake app still available at the time of publication.

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