Why is iMessage combining two contacts into one thread. I can only text back the last one that messaged me. This started with iOS 12

After waiting well over a week for Apple to do something regarding this disaster of a merged thread situation, and needing to communicate independently with my husband and kids, I solved the issue by downloading another messaging app and using it for family members. The "WhatsApp" app has solved this issue and we are enjoying the new messaging platform without any issues as it only uses your phone number. I believe each family member would need their own phone number for this to work, so families with younger children who do not yet have their own phone number would need to find another app that would perhaps use email addresses instead.

I have the same issue since updating to IOS 12. All my wife’s, sons and daughters txt are sent to everyone. We all use the same apple account.

We have a mix of devices from iPhone 6s to 8plus.

Will Apple create a fix for this?

My wife works in the healthcare field. Last night she was attending a function when she was called by one of her associates about a problem that needed immediate attention. As she was at this function she texted her boss on how to proceed on this critical issue. However, the text she sent came to me rather than her boss. As she did not receive any acknowledgment from the text (as it came to me while I was at home instead of her superior) after about 5 minutes she called him to see how to proceed. The issue was only rectified after she made the phone call.

Obviously, she does not share an AppleID with her boss. Unfortunately, I guess it is going to take the death of someone before Apple admits it has an iMessage bug in iOS 12.

I made a screenshot of the message she sent her boss that inexplicably landed on my iPhone if anyone doubts my word.

This is being handled super poorly by Apple. As one of the people who has multiple devices on one AppleID, the solution of "you shouldn't do that, it's your fault you're having this issue" rings a bit hollow. For your issue EskimoMe (which is the same issue I was having), you will need to read back through and see if any of the prior mentioned fixes work. The one that has worked for us is as follows: Try only having one of your phones set up in messaging to "start new conversation from" your AppleID email address (for our family, i set mine up in that way). The others should send and receive from only their cell phone #. Next, have all members of your family go into iMessage and delete all old groups chats and individual chats with anyone that was part of this problem. Then, re-initiate iMessaging with them. That worked for us...for now. Perhaps its as simple as now iMessage knows my phone is the only one initiating from our AppleID - but who knows...

While I know there are plenty of people telling those of us who have done this it's our fault, I respectfully submit that when you are head of IT for your family, and you have teenagers who you would like to monitor / control their access to things, having them on your AppleID is the easiest way to do it. My guess is no one that works at Apple, or is a programmer at Apple does this because they know how the system works, etc. But nearly everyone we know has their family set up this way - and it's clear from this thread and article online that a LOT of people have their lives organized this way. If Apple would like to force us all to change, great, come out with some communication that this is now demanded - but do it BEFORE you release this universal messaging thing, and come up with a way to help parents solve this a different way. You shouldn't just ignore the collateral damage because you feel "we've told you so before..." If that's the case - don't allow multiple phones to even be hooked up to an AppleID. By allowing this, for probably 15 years or more, you've created your own problem. Just engage with your customers, tell them what's going on, and make some recommendations. But as long as you allow people to put more than one iPhone on an AppleID - this problem will persist...

I started having problems too today. It’s merging random contacts with another random contact in my phone. I’ve come across at least 3 different merges so fast, none of which are related to the other person in any way. I noticed one contact who I haven’t been in contact with since 2015 and have no saved text messages from merged with another contact I have no conversation with in the past 2 yrs. I turned off iMessages and it’s still messed up. While doing iMessage earlier with one person, all of a sudden it changed their name at top of screen to someone random in my contacts. I was still chatting with original person in message and have no idea how it just merged 2 random people. Once I deleted the contact of the person I was not actually chatting with, the person’s name who I was actually chatting with came back up. Thankfully deleting the one contact wasn’t a big deal but I’m not going to delete other people I know and communicate with regularly. It also messes up find friends and puts the random name of someone other than the actual person saved in my find friends.

sjvivian wrote:

...having them on your AppleID is the easiest way to do it.

Then you WILL have problems. Apple has NEVER supported ID sharing. By the way, there IS an easier way to do it.

Incidentally, Apple does not allow or disallow any specific activity. You own your iPhone and you can use it as you wish. However, when you choose not to follow Apple's instructions, don't expect your iPhone to work flawlessly.

An important clarification... Apple instructions specifically describe putting many devices on a single Apple ID (I have five). Apple does not support multiple PERSONS sharing an ID.

Please expand on the easier way (I'm genuinely interested)...Is there a way to monitor a teen or pre-teen's messaging from another device (when all their friends have iPhones and are using iMessage), to track what they can / cannot download, what's in their camera roll, ping their phone when they've lost it, or aren't responding, wipe it if they've lost it, etc... I'm through that stage of my life for the most part (thank goodness), but I know lots of parents who aren't. If Apple doesn't want this issue - they shouldn't allow multiple iPhones on one account. Period. That is the root of their problem. They know it, have known it, and have ignored it and blamed the users. I have 6 personal devices tied to one AppleID - but of the personal devices, only one is a phone. That's the problem they have. Apple not supporting it, but knowingly allowing it, is the issue. For what it's worth, I recognize this issue - but it sounds like in this thread there are plenty of people having other contact related / messaging related issues with iOS 12.

Tried to edit prior post as it reads more snarky than intended - just seems this issue is a tough one for Apple and customers. Folks at Verizon or ATT store or Best Buy - when you're getting a phone for your kid, the suggestions aren't super "clear" - and while I've known Apple doesn't want people to have different users on an AppleID, I cannot recall ever needing "support" for something such as this. Perhaps it is time to abandon - but if my kids were younger and I still wanted some of the monitoring functions, it would be much harder to do...

Let's just forget the family thing for a second.

Let's say I have two phones, one for work and one for personal all under one ID, as it is only me using it. As it stands now even if I tell my work phone only send/receive from this number and do the same for my personal phone, it will still mix things up into one big pile of garbage.

As multiple users under one ID this is essentially what we are doing. It doesn't make a difference if it's one user or twenty, these phones are not sending/receiving at the correct addresses. They still have a "section, settings > messages > send & receive", this is what isn't working correctly not multiple users using one ID.

We are having the same problem, my wife, son and me. It’s merging messages and I can only respond, I can’t do an original message or it goes to the wrong person. We split into three ITunes accounts and it didn’t fix it. Messages are still getting merged together. This is crazy and we need to find a solution quickly.

Philly_Phan wrote:

That's precisely why work/personal phones should have different IDs, one assigned to John Doe and the other assigned to John Q. Doe.

Then why does Messages even ask what number you want to receive messages for? By your logic it is ALL of your numbers by default.

dirwuf wrote:

Philly_Phan wrote:

That's precisely why work/personal phones should have different IDs, one assigned to John Doe and the other assigned to John Q. Doe.

Then why does Messages even ask what number you want to receive messages for? By your logic it is ALL of your numbers by default.

I'm not here to argue. Do what you wish but please don't complain when you have problems.

Philly_Phan wrote:

dirwuf wrote:

Philly_Phan wrote:

That's precisely why work/personal phones should have different IDs, one assigned to John Doe and the other assigned to John Q. Doe.

Then why does Messages even ask what number you want to receive messages for? By your logic it is ALL of your numbers by default.

I'm not here to argue. Do what you wish but please don't complain when you have problems.

I'm not being confrontational, you may be right about all of this. I sincerely want to know the answer because it doesn't fit the narrative.

Why do people keep posting that it's a problem in "sharing Apple IDs"? I do not believe that is the issue. There are a number of posters, including me, that are experiencing the problem and have said that they have family members each on their own unique Apple ID. I had our phones set up on individual Apple IDs for months before IOS 12 came out and started causing this problem. I have six lines on the same account, each with a separate Apple ID. All phones have been checked and the "Send & Receive" settings, etc. are all correct. Yet, my phone, my wife's phone, and one of our daughter's phones (but none of the others) are experiencing this problem.

This is correct, I have myself and three others on family sharing with the same exact issue. All started with iOS 12. Any fix such as wiping the phones, separating the family, changing each Apple ID password, has failed. We even turned off iMessage for all family members, deleted the threads on each phone, and it worked for about an hour with separate SMS threads, then iOS consolidated the same people into one thread. We did have everyone on the same Apple ID in the past, but this was changed to each user having their own ID and added to family sharing, before iOS 12 was even in beta.

I don't believe this will be fixed by anything in iMessage, rather there is something that looks for old combined Apple ID associations and is consolidating those contacts, whether or not you are still associated or not. We need to be able to turn off the flag that associated those contacts in the past.

This is frustrating, and honestly preaching about proper use of Apple ID's in the past simply does not help solve the immediate problem, which is that a LOT of people are having problems using the product, and this situation needs to be addressed, not ignored due to policy that was never actually followed in the first place by quite of bit of the user base.