When I delete a iMessage from a conversation, does it get deleted from the recipients screen as well ?

When I delete a iMessage from a conversation, does it get deleted from the recipients screen as well ?

iPad

Posted on Aug 24, 2014 9:22 PM

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Posted on Nov 16, 2017 12:30 PM

Your premise is not entirely reasonable. You sent the message, voluntarily (even if you accidentally sent it to the wrong recipient), using a messaging system that does not facilitate remotely deleting messages from other devices.


You can't walk out on a crowded street and shout something, then recall the shout. You can't walk in a theater and yell fire then just take it back. You cannot drop a letter in a USPS mailbox then reach in and take it back (not legally). You can't send an email then recall it. Even if you send it from Microsoft Outlook via an Exchange server, the recall feature is hard to find, only works if the recipient has not yet read the email on any device that they are able to read email on, and only works if the recipient has the Outlook app actually open somewhere, and even after all that, the mechanism only moves the message to the recipient's deleted folder where they can still find it, and is not 100% reliable. That is, unless you DRM-enable the message, which requires that you have a public/private keypair properly configured and so on. It's complicated. What I'm saying is that what you're asking is not a particularly common feature anywhere.


There are some services that let you set expiration timers on messages. Whatsapp recently added the ability to remotely delete messages, but there are still caveats.

64 replies

Apr 28, 2016 6:47 PM in response to vena.abdallah

vena.abdallah wrote:

Legal issues should be accounted for only when message is(seen), but before that or when it's only (delivered) , it would be nice if deleting it would delete it from the receiver's device as well. would really solve some of our emotional problems.

???

if you have emotional issues with sending messages and recalling them, perhaps you should pause a bit longer before sending them...

Apr 28, 2016 7:43 PM in response to vena.abdallah

it would be nice if deleting it would delete it from the receiver's device as well. would really solve some of our emotional problems.


There is absolutely no way for technology to do what you want. How would a server (a machine) somewhere in the world know that you deleted an email on your computer? Aside from that, no machine can help with anyone's emotional problems. People do need to remember to be responsible for their actions.

Apr 29, 2016 5:49 AM in response to vena.abdallah

vena.abdallah wrote:


Legal issues should be accounted for only when message is(seen), but before that or when it's only (delivered) , it would be nice if deleting it would delete it from the receiver's device as well. would really solve some of our emotional problems.

In real life, there are consequences to our actions. As adults, we have to deal with them. When you say something mean or stupid, you own up to it and apologize.

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When I delete a iMessage from a conversation, does it get deleted from the recipients screen as well ?

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