Q: User's phone attached to someone else's iMessage
Hi, I've discovered something which I find very concerning about Messages app on iPhone/Mac. It's a weird situation so I'll do my best to explain the scenario. Person X who is one of my contacts sends me a text but when I reply back to them in the same conversation window it goes to Person Y instead. Person X got an Android phone and a phone number from their cell phone carrier. Person Y used to have that same phone number on an iPhone and registered that phone number with AppleID. Person Y eventually changed his phone number but didn't remove that number from his AppleID and eventually the cell phone company recycled that phone number and gave it to person X. This is why Person Y is still getting messages meant for Person X.
I use text messages for business and find it of great concern that someone else may be receiving private information which isn't meant for their eyes. I spoke with Apple and there's nothing that the current owner (Person X) of that phone number can do. Only the original owner, Person Y, can go into their settings and disassociate that old phone number from their Apple ID.
There should be a mechanism to report these types of scenarios which would in affect force Person Y to verify through an SMS that he still has that phone number (which he doesn't) to have that phone number removed from that AppleID. OR a less drastic measure is to add a feature into Contacts on iPhone/Mac where you can set up on a per contact basis to only use SMS and not iMessage. Right now if any phone number was ever registered with Apple, messages sent to that number will automatically default to iMessage. I know you can do a long press on the iPhone and say "send vis SMS" but that option doesn't exist on the Mac and I do lots of texting via Messages app on Mac OS.
MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)
Posted on Sep 2, 2016 11:47 AM