Apple introduces tool for deregistering iMessage, even if you no longer have an iPhone.

Apple has added a page to its website for deregistering and turning off iMessage for users that have switched from an iPhone to an Android device or other non-Apple smartphone. The new web-based tool arrives after Apple faced a lawsuit over Android users having undelivered text messages from other iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users still using iMessage.

For those that have switched to another smartphone and no longer own an iPhone, the website provides a field where you can enter your phone number, receive a confirmation code and enter that code to confirm your iMessage deregistration. Apple also reiterates instructions on how to deregister and turn off iMessage if you still have an iPhone.

The step-by-step instructions for those that still have an iPhone are as follows: transfer your SIM card to your iPhone, open Settings, tap on Messages and turn off iMessage using the toggle switch. If you are still dealing with undelivered text messages after following those steps, Apple has also added a support page for deregistering iMessage.

Personal iMessages going to a shared iPad? Heres how to fix it!

Shared iPads are commonplace in many households. While the kids use it to play games, the adults may use it to store recipes, check sports scores, and more. Depending on whose Apple ID was used to set up the iPad initially, you may find that someone’s iMessages are showing up on the shared iPad, which may not be desirable for many. Depending on your particular situation, there are a few ways to solve this problem. So you can choose what’s best for you and your family, we’ll walk you through each one!

Option 1: Deactivate iMessage on the iPad

The easiest solution to stopping private iMessages from showing up on a shared iPad is to completely deactivate iMessage. This means messages will stop altogether and none of the addresses you use for iMessage will be able to be used. The down side to this is that you won’t be able to send messages at all from the shared iPad. If that’s okay with you, complete the steps below and you’re done. If you’d rather be able to send messages, just not intertwine them with someone else’s personal account, continue on for more options.

1. Launch the Settings app on the shared iPad.
2. Tap on Messages.
3. Turn Off iMessage.

Option 2: Exclude your phone number from iMessage

If you want to be able to send and receive iMessages on the iPad, you can always choose to exclude messages that are specifically sent to someone’s phone number, presumably their iPhone. You’ll need to complete two steps in order to do this, and also consider that if someone sends that person an iMessage to their email, it will show up on the shared iPad too. This is something you can’t currently stop from happening. But you can help prevent it with the following steps:

1. Launch the Settings app on the shared iPad.
2. Tap on Messages.
3. Tap on Send & Receive.
4. Uncheck the person’s phone number under the first section.
5. Now be sure that under the Start New Conversations From section, one of the email addresses listed are selected, not the phone number associated with that Apple ID.
6. Launch the Settings app on that particular person’s iPhone now.
7. Tap on Messages.
8. Tap on Send & Receive.
9. Make sure only the phone number is selected in both sections.

While the above method isn’t completely foolproof, it should result in you only creating and receiving iMessages associated with your actual phone number. It should work for most folks but for those who want an even more foolproof method, check out option 3.

Option 3: Add an email alias for iMessage use

If you want to be sure that the shared iPad only receives messages that are specifically intended for it, you can always add an email alias to your existing Apple ID that you’ll only use specifically for the shared iPad. This is a good option if you want to be able to send messages inside your family and don’t mind using someone’s existing ID to make that possible without too much effort.

In order to add another email to your Apple ID, you can follow our guide on adding additional email addresses.

Just like other methods, if someone outside your family knows that particular email, it won’t keep them from sending messages to it. If you want a completely foolproof way to be able to send messages on the shared iPad without invading anyone’sprivacy, continue on to option 4.

4. Create a new Apple ID

The only way to be sure that no one’s privacy is invaded on a shared iPad is to create an Apple ID just for that iPad that everyone has access to. Only share that Apple ID with the people that you want to be able to send messages with from the shared iPad. It’s also a good idea to make sure that they know it’s on a shared device.

There are also other benefits of creating an Apple ID for use on a shared device. One of the biggest ones is that if you use iCloud to back up your shared iPad, you won’t be eating into anyone’s storage plan and the iPad will get its own. For some folks, that may be reason enough to create a new Apple ID.

Apple: No, we can’t read your iMessages.

The QuarksLab research explains how since Apple controls the encryption keys for iMessage, it could theoretically perform a “man-in-the-middle attack” and read or alter the communications between two people, either for nefarious purposes or for the government.

Apple spokesperson Trudy Miller sent a statement to AllThingsD about the research, saying “iMessage is not architected to allow Apple to read messages. The research discussed theoretical vulnerabilities that would require Apple to re-engineer the iMessage system to exploit it, and Apple has no plans or intentions to do so.”

AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski sums up his story about Apple’s declaration with a good comment about the state of surveillance these days, saying “perhaps in today’s world iMessage’s encryption is only as good as your trust in Apple.” With other companies being asked by the NSA to enable methods of intercepting messages, one security researcher told AllThingsD that “it would be naive to think that Apple wasn’t at least approached by the government at some point.”

iMessage failures after installing iOS 7? You’re not the only one.

Over on Apple’s support communities webpage, there’s a growing thread of iOS 7 users complaining of not being able to use iMessage. It’s not the first time I’ve heard of the issue though. My own mother-in-law started having trouble with iMessage since upgrading, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler (@parislemon) also complained on twitter about a similar issue yesterday. Simply put: It seems to be affecting a few people. And it’s not showing as a general iCloud/Apple system error on the status page.

If iCloud and iMessage services were down, it would almost be better. iMessages failing to send would just send as SMS messages. With this issue in iOS 7, they’re not sending at all. On Apple’s support pages, the issue first showed up when iOS 7 was initially available. However, it’s become a more frequently reported problem since iOS 7.0.2 landed last week.

So what’s the fix? Signing in and out of iMessage doesn’t work for most, and that would be the usual problem solver in this situation. Turns out, there is a way to make it work that requires more than just switching iMessage off. First, go to Settings>Messages and switch iMessage off. Then reset your iPhone’s network settings by going to Settings>General>Reset>Reset Network Settings. Once you’ve done that, switch iMessage back on again.

That method should work, and has been successful with most users who’ve tried it. If it doesn’t, you could also try rebooting your device by pressing and holding the home and power buttons simultaneously until your iPhone resets. But that method has seen mixed results.

Having trouble with iMessage or FaceTime on iOS 7? Here’s how to fix it!

iMessage and FaceTime are wonderful, empowering, enabling technologies that… can frustrate the crap out of you at times. One of those times is when you update or restore your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to a new operating system – like millions of people just did with iOS 7 – and it stops working. If you’re having trouble with iMessage or FaceTime, if they won’t activate or simply won’t work, here are some things you can try:

1. Turn FaceTime or iMessage off and then back on in Settings.
   1. Launch Settings by tapping the icon on the Home screen
   2. Scroll down to Messages or FaceTime
   3. Toggle the switch from on (green) to off (white)
   4. Wait a minute
   5. Toggle the switch back to on (green)
   6. Wait for it to re-activate
2. Hard reboot your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad
   1. Make sure you’re on Wi-Fi
   2. Hold down both the Home button on the front, and the Sleep/Wake button on the top of your device
   3. Wait for the Apple logo to appear
   4. If it still doesn’t work, repeat step 1 (turning FaceTime or iMessage off and on)

One of those, or a combination of both, should get you going again.

Source: iMore.

Apple Now Allows You To Report iMessage Spam.

Do you get frustrating iMessage spam from people you’ve never met, or companies you’ve never heard of? You’re not the only one. Until now, you could either make friends with them and save yourself from loneliness on those cold winter nights, or you could ignore them and hope that they don’t text again.

But now you can report them to Apple, too.

Apple has published a new support document on its website, which was first spotted by MacStories, that explains the procedure for reporting iMessage spam. These are the steps you should take:

To report unwanted iMessage messages to Apple, please send an email with the following details to: imessage.spam@icloud.com

1. Include a screenshot of the message you have received.
2. Include the full email address or phone number you received the unwanted message from.
3. Include the date and time that you received the message.

Apple then goes on to explain how to take screenshots on a Mac or iOS device, and how you can distinguish iMessages from traditional SMS and MMS messages.

Fortunately, I’ve never received iMessage spam, and I don’t know anyone who has. But clearly it’s an issue big enough to warrant an Apple support document. It’s unclear what Apple does with your report, but I’m assuming it has the facility to block frequent spammers from sending iMessages.

 

Source: Cult of Mac.

Is your iMessage hiding the last word of your texts?

Have you seen this bug before? Anyone? According to the vast amount of complaints on Twitter, and some checking done by The Verge, if you type something such as “I could be the next Obama” or “The best prize is a surprise” in iMessage, the last word of that message will disappear. After some digging by The Verge, a support forum thread from December was found that indicated that this issue has been going on for a while. Apparently the issue only works on iPhone and Mac though, the iPad seems unaffected. I personally couldn’t reproduce this, but this may be a result of the extensive modifications I’ve done to my phone through jailbreaking. iMessage just isn’t doing too well recently, is it.

Source: TodaysiPhone.

Apple having US network issues: affecting iMessage and App Store.

We’re getting scattered reports on Twitter that Apple is having network issues affecting both its iMessage service and the App Store.

With our TiP base in the UK unaffected the problem appears to be confined to the USA. Apple call centers have confirmed the problems, and in the last few moments the outage has been posted to Apple’s System Status webpage. System Status is confirming that iMessage has an issue, and it is also reporting a FaceTime issue, with multiple users unable to use the service. There is no mention of the reported App Store problems. According to the page issues began some time shortly before  10am EST.

Source: TodaysiPhone.

Apple’s iMessage encryption thwarts government investigations.

The encryption used by Apple’s iMessage service is hindering federal drug enforcement agency investigations, says a report in CNET. CNET obtained an internal Drug Enforcement Administration document that details the problem faced by agents who are tracking suspects using non-traditional communication methods.

According to the document, the end-to-end encryption used by iMessage makes it “impossible to intercept iMessages between two Apple devices,” even when there is a court order authorizing the electronic wiretap. This problem was discovered when agents noticed that messages sent from one iPhone to another iPhone via iMessage were not being captured during a surveillance.

The inability to adequately conduct surveillance is a growing problem for law enforcement. FBI director Robert Mueller recently told Congress that “there is a growing and dangerous gap between law enforcement’s legal authority to conduct electronic surveillance, and its actual ability to conduct such surveillance.” He asked Congress “to ensure that the laws by which we operate and which provide protection to individual privacy rights keep pace with new threats and new technology.”

 

Source: TUAW.

If Messages on OS X ‘can’t connect,’ check your serial number.

Messages recently stopped working on my iMac. Suddenly it said that it could not connect. More specifically, I could not use Apple’s iMessage service. I could use AIM or Google Talk, but iMessage was the service that I wanted to use.

(Note: When I refer to ‘Messages’ I mean the actual application on my Mac. When I refer to ‘iMessage’ I mean the service which Apple provides which lets you send instant messages to Macs and iOS devices.)

I tried a few things that I could think of: I checked to make sure that my proxy wasn’t blocking anything that could be relevant; I made sure there was nothing in /etc/hosts that could be interfering; I created a new user account on my iMac. Nothing made any difference.

At the same time, other iCloud services were working just fine, including calendar and contact syncing, so I assumed that it wasn’t iCloud related. I could use the same Wi-Fi network to connect to iMessage using my MacBook Air. It seemed like it had to be something connected to my iMac specifically…but what?

I decided to reinstall OS X on my iMac for other reasons not related to this problem, and the first thing I tried was connecting to iMessage. No joy. So if it wasn’t related to my Wi-Fi network and it wasn’t related to my installation of OS X… what else was left?

Hardware?

The idea that the problem could be hardware-related seemed odd to me, but I had done my best to eliminate all other factors, so the one which remained must be the truth.

It was then that I remembered an odd little detail about my iMac: it has no serial number. No, my iMac didn’t “fall off the back of a truck.” I bought it directly from Apple, and even bought AppleCare for it, which was a good thing because I had to have the hard drive and the logic board replaced.

Some time after the logic board was replaced, I realized that the serial number was listed as ‘Not Available’ in the System Information (which used to be called ‘System Profiler’ in earlier versions of OS X.) I did some checking and found that this was something which was supposed to be done by the guy who installed the new logic board, but he had apparently forgotten to do it. I was also told that there was nothing that I could do to fix it.

It never caused any problems, so I had never worried about it before. In fact, I had been able to use iMessage through the Messages on my iMac until recently. It seemed improbable, but I was out of guesses as to what else might be the cause. I asked on Twitter and got a few suggestions, but none of them panned out. Someone else even said that they had been able to use Messages on a Mac without a serial number, but it had been awhile since they had done it.

With no other options available, I had no other choice but to check with an Apple Authorized Service Provider. Fortunately, since I still have my original box, he was able to find the original serial number. After running some sort of “Apple Authorized Service Provider”-only software on it, my iMac had its old serial number back.

Neither one of us had much hope that this would make a difference, but after rebooting the iMac and logging in, Messages was immediately able to connect to the iMessage service, and it works perfectly.

Don’t ask me why.

The facts are these: My iMac was able to use iMessages, and then it wasn’t. I tried everything I could over several weeks to fix it, and nothing did. When the serial number was restored, iMessages immediately started working again.

I can think of some possible reasons why this happened, but none of them are anything more than guessing.

• Is this a new ‘feature’ of the iMessage protocol or the Messages.app that it will only work on Macs with serial numbers?
• If so, is this Apple’s way of cracking down on OS X installations on non-Apple hardware?
• Is it possible that iMessage was never supposed to work on Macs without a valid number and they’ve just started enforcing it now?

All of those seem unlikely to me. After all, why would Apple allow me use the rest of iCloud except for iMessage?

If they were making such a check, I would hope that they would have made it more clear, showing an error message that was more descriptive than “Couldn’t connect.”

• Is this a bug? Did I hit some sort of an edge-case that Apple had not tested for?

That seems possible. I would not be surprised if Apple made some change on the server side of the iMessage service which triggered this, or Apple fixed an unrelated bug and had this side effect.

In any case, iMessage did not work, and now it does. It seems clear that the fix was getting the serial number restored.

I share this information because while there may not be many Mac users out there who found themselves with Macs without serial numbers, we are out there. Even just mentioning this on Twitter led me to discover someone in the same situation. If you’re one of them, getting this fixed will mean finding an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple Store who can fix it for you. Be sure to bring whatever paperwork to show ownership, and any repair receipts you might have. (Apple Stores should be able to pull up your service record for repairs done under AppleCare.)

Source: TUAW.