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iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

blog.benjaminste.in

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Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#61

Post by sneak »

shurcooL wrote: post #57
sneak wrote: post #43

Preventative step: set your outbound iMessage "caller id" to your email address instead of your phone number. Do this now, before you're bitten by the bug. (Apple's degraded QA as of late on iOS means you'll also have to change it back on ALL your devices on the account any time you add or remove any devices or numbers to iMessage or FaceTime on that Apple ID, too.) This way, all your contacts are iMessaging with you…

Yes, this is a good idea. But it's an extension of "stop relying so much on a non-free, proprietary 9-digit number as your id only to be at the mercy of your phone carrier". Personally, I use a data-only plan and feel much better than when I had a carrier-provided phone number.

A data-only plan still has a carrier-provided phone number, and it will still default to that phone number when sending iMessages, happily ignorant of the fact that it can't call or text or MMS.

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#62

Post by benstein »

owenwil wrote: post #51
benstein wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. I still have the iPhone. Everything is unlinked, deactivated, reset, etc in every way possible.

In that case, you seem to have run into a separate bug. This is what worked for me when I switched back to Android. How long have you been waiting?

8 weeks

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#64

Post by macspoofing »

darkpicnic wrote: post #38

Exact. Same. Issue. All their solutions do not work. I've reset Apple ID and wiped all my old iOS devices. Roughly 90% of my friends cannot text me anymore. What's comical about this is how easy it is to fix: have a cache that breaks weekly; upon new text message, ping Apple HQ and see if device is iOS and has iMessage installed; great, save for a week.

You can do better than that. User marks iMessage account as 'inactive'. Next time someone tries to send to his address via iMessage, ping their client with an "invalidate-cache-and-send-as-SMS" status code, and it's done. Everything is handled transparently to the sending user.

No matter what, it would require some sort of update.

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#65

Post by MehdiEG »

Same problem here and I know quite a few people who've had these issues as well.

iMessage is a huge mess - even if you're still using your iPhone. Back in December, when I was still on iPhone, I went in a month-long trip abroad. Since data roaming still costs a fortune, I had data switched off most of the time. I'd just connect on wifi whenever possible and occasionally switched on the data connection when I really needed to get online while on the go.

Yet, despite the fact that I was roaming and that I had my data connection switched off, most of the text messages that my iOS-using contacts sent me were sent via iMessage instead of plain SMS. Which meant that I'd only get their message when I went back online, hours and sometimes days later.

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#66

Post by conductor »

owenwil wrote: post #50
RyanZAG wrote: post #30

Just think, if you hadn't used a proprietary messaging solution as your default contact method, you'd be able to easily control how you receive the messages. Maybe stuff like this happening is a good thing as it drills home the point the 'crazy free software lunatics' have been going on about for some time. Having this kind of thing happen to someone makes the stuff FSF+co says a bit more relevant and ultimately help…

So, what's an open-source alternative to iMessage that lots of people use?

The best alternative is TextSecure[0] I think (another one is the Telegram[1]), but they are not used by "lots of people".

[0] - https://whispersystems.org/

[1] - https://telegram.org/

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#67

Post by mrcharles »

I had this same problem and the best case fix seems to be to reset your Apple ID password; this forces you to log out from all devices, and so iMessage will at least error out for people who try and text you. But their devices will never go back to normal texts unless they specifically force it too, and that kind of lock-in is utter bullshit.

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#68

Post by shurcooL »

sneak wrote: post #61
shurcooL wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is a good idea. But it's an extension of "stop relying so much on a non-free, proprietary 9-digit number as your id only to be at the mercy of your phone carrier". Personally, I use a data-only plan and feel much better than when I had a carrier-provided phone number.

A data-only plan still has a carrier-provided phone number, and it will still default to that phone number when sending iMessages, happily ignorant of the fact that it can't call or text or MMS.

You're talking about invisible implementation details.

My iMessage/FaceTime are set to use an email as the only ID. No one else knows or uses my data-only phone number. Just like they don't know or use my IMEI number.

Re: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

#69

Post by bcj »

The same thing happened to me when I broke my iPhone a few months back. I ended up speaking to 3 or 4 different representatives explaining that I had removed the phone number from all my iDevices, but couldn't turn iMessages off from the device. I went so far as borrowing a friend's phone, and getting a new phone number associated with my Apple account. The solution that ended up working for me was changing the password associated with my Apple account.

I don't understand why Apple doesn't have a solution to this yet. It was obviously going to be a problem from the start.

The people I feel worst for are those who get a phone number that used to belong to an iPhone user. They may miss texts without any idea what is going on, and without any recourse to fix it.

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