Group Message in iOS5

I noticed this issue(Feature) the day after I upgraded to iOS5. While this is not a show stopper for me, these should be treated as SMS messages and not emails. I am now getting text messages from people I dont even know, because they are responding to a group message from a friend of mine. While I know this is a minor issue, it is very annoying. I hope Apple will address this issue as well.

I too am encountering these issues. My text messages are normal, but when I send a photo to multiple people, WITH GROUP MESSAGING OFF, everyone is still able to see who got the message and reply as if gorup messaging was on.

1) First called AT&T, the tech support supervisor first told me it was impossible. She then walked through everything I did and said, Oh my Lord, you are correct. I then informed her, yes I know. That this bug/issue caused me a great deal of grief, because someone responsded to my message and it went to everyone and caused one of my friends to get terribly upset. I was told by AT&T to call Apple.

2) Called Apple, the tech there told me he had no complaints of this issue. I pretty much begged him to walk throught the excersie with me. And YES, he confirmed the same problem. I said people are under the impression that when you sent a text message with or without a photo, that it is not a public forum, especially when group messaging is off. YES, he duplicated this issue. I was told it would be "escalated" and that I would hear back from them. This is two weeks ago and I have not heard back.

This is a major annoyance. Anytime I want to send a photo, I now need to do it under a seperate cover. Meaning 8 text messages, 8 times to 8 individual people. How annoying and archaic is this. Come on APPLE fix this. Not to mention the grief this has casued between friends and family. If GROUP MESSAGING is off, your message should NOT be subjected to group replies and everyone seeing your message. Serioulsly, why can't we get an acknowledgment on this screw-up with a commitment to fix it. God knows we consumers spent a ton of money on these products and count on them to be reliable.

My wife and I are both having this issue as well. Group messaging is off, but it's still working as if it's on. There are also about 5 other people we know that are having the same problem. VERY ANNOYING!!

This is an extremely annoying problem. Over the weekend, someone had a baby. They send out a group text picture of the baby right after the birth to my husbands number. Problem is that we don't know them. All of the numbers appeared as telephone numbers which means none of them were in his phone book. All day long, he got messages from all the people who responded and the original sender and all their responses. PLEASE FIX THIS!! ABSOLUTELY ANNOYING!!!!!

Do us all a favor and call Apple to report the issue. It seems even though a couple people have confirmed the prescence of the bug to apple support they are still acting as if no one is having the issue.

Personally I can't believe the bug hasn't hit mainstream news. The amount of embarrassment and issues this bug can cause is tremendous.

Is there somewhere on their website to report this issue? It should be getting at least as much press as the crappy battery! What's the deal?!

Does anyone know if progress is being made on this? My problem started after the os 5 update, too. Previously having group messaging off worked fine. Now, it makes no difference. I tried turning imessage off, but then I didn't receive texts from people who were using imessage. They never came through. It's incredibly frustrating and I hope they're able to fix it soon!

this is very annoying. happening to everyone i know thats running ios5!

OMG.

This has been so embrassing!

I can't believe this. This is a MAJOR ISSUE!

APPLE, FIX THIS NOW!

It doesn't look like this reply all to group texts is a bug at all. it's listed as a feature of the iPhone 4 and iOS5. Check out what's listed on the Apple site:

Text one. Text all.

Send a message to one person or to many friends at once — along with photos, videos, or links you like. When someone replies, everyone sees it. With iMessage, as soon as your message appears on a friend’s iOS device, you’ll get a delivery receipt letting you know it went through. You can enable read receipts for a visual “copy that.” And see when someone is in the middle of typing out a reply. iMessages are securely encrypted, so it’s just between friends.

never the less, i'm going to disable iMessage and group messaging. hopefully this will fix the problem.

This is most definatley a bug for many of us, as indicated in previous posts. This occurs when Group Messaging and Imessage are both disabled. It does not occur on regular text messages, but will occur when you attach a photo. As mentioned in my previous post, I have gotten an acknledgement for an Apple Tech support that it is not supposed to work this way. When the options are disabled, there should be no sort of Group Communication/Sharing going on. I can send a text message with a photo attached, have Group Message and Imessage both off and everyone I sent it to can see and reply to everyone on the list. This is a boo boo on Apple's behalf. if everything is disabled then how can everyone see and reply....hmmm only if there is a bug. I have called three times on this already and have a case file. I wish everyone else that has this issue would do the same thing. Call in and log it. Please report this issue when you come across it, privacy is meant to be just that PRIVATE. If you turn off IMessage and Group Message you should NOT be subjected to everyones resoponses to everything, nor should the people to sent it to. Not cool at all, total invasion of privacy. This is gonna hit the wrong person and then they will be looking at a law suit.

I am in Australia, don't even have a 'Group Message' option in my Settings/Message menu and am somehow having the same prob. Quite embarrassing when I've just sent 32 people an MMS about our new bub! A bunch didn't even receive the original text, but they've all been receiving all the replies.

Do you think this will be fixed soon, Apple? Thanks.

Bumping this issue. Very frustarting to turn off group messaging and MMS messaging but still get all of the random replies from an sms. Nobody at Apple wants to help in support for this it seems.

I need Group Message, pls (fix the bug but) do not off the feature!

This "feature", aside from being a security concern (sending each individual person in a group the contact info for every other person in the group), this also creates a MAJOR annoyance for recipients of these messages even on NON-iOS devices, including potentially increased service fees.

If an iOS user sends a group message, and isn't careful (I'm not sure yet what causes this), it will get sent as a picture message, NOT just a text message. This can occur even when the message contains only text.

Then, if any of the recipients also has iOS, and they reply to the message, it will send a PICTURE MESSAGE reply to EVERYONE the original message was sent to. This means an unnecessarily large number of picture messages are being sent, unintentionally, to a large number of people. Picture messages are still treated differently than text messages (especially for overage fee calculations) on many mobile phone services providers' plans.

Even if it were just text messages, this is still a bad default behavior since many users do not have unlimited texting plans. If your contacts don't have iOS devices, or they don't send group messages, then this issue won't affect you. I think the interaction of these two items is all that is preventing this from being a "Major" issue in the eyes of Apple.

It really needs to be changed/fixed. I shouldn't be punished for having friends with iOS devices and for not having a smartphone with unlimited texting, but currently this is somewhat the case. Receiving picture messages on my phone is fine when they are infrequent, however when I get ten of them at once, and ZERO of them were meant for me, it is extremely annoying, and in my opinion, it is a MAJOR issue.

Message was edited by: Jon Hoffman