Understanding Bridges
What Are Bridges?
Bridges are, for me personally, one of the coolest and most exciting ways of communicating with almost all of my contacts.
Let’s take matrix.org’s coolest selling point and why you may consider using it: It gives you the ability to send messages in private conversations and group conversations to WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Discord, IRC, and many, many more.
It’s basically Thunderbird but for real-time communication, where you decide from which client, operating system, terminal, or even Amiga to communicate with your friends, family, and social groups.
As long as you find a sane or even obscure way to get a connection to your main protocol, you are good to go.
Important Considerations
Before diving into this topic, two things to consider:
1. Rate Limits and Account Bans
There is always a risk of getting rate-limited or even banned from the platform we are creating a connection to. Though, from my experience, as long as you do not start abusing your account, things work fine.
Personally, I experienced a rate limit from Instagram. After that, I just disconnected my personal account from the bridge, and I can still use it. On top of that, the most important bridges for me, like WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, and Signal, worked without any problems.
2. Security Implications
As we work here with devices that haven’t received any software and especially security updates, there is, depending on the device and, of course, common sense, always a risk of getting pwned somehow.
Please, please do not use this guide and service as a way to replace your current up-to-date device. I personally do important stuff on my workstation and laptop, as I rarely use my smartphone. When I do anything on these devices, I try to always follow best practices, and if I have to lower the security at some point to be able to connect and interact from the Blackberry Classic, I reevaluate the risks, the settings, and the service itself.
The Evolution of Bridges
Maybe worth noting, the bridge I currently use for my Blackberry Classic has been in development for over two decades.
The concept of bridges was really common until almost every current popular messenger made it harder; fewer people kept working on them, and they slowly died.
Somehow, in the last few years, if you get into this topic, you can notice more developers allowing access again.