iOS iMessage Alert: Texting Continues Even After iPhone Gets Stolen

Tweet

Those of you that had your iPhone stolen will be “happy” to hear that there’s a new iOS bug that could affect your iMessage experience. Apparently iPhones running iOS 5 that have been stolen still manage to somehow hang on to the original Apple ID used to activate iMessage. And iMessage works with that particular ID even though that shouldn’t happen once the new iPhone owner starts using the handset.

Ars Technica reports that this is a widespread issue spotted by various iPhone users that had their smartphone lost or stolen. Even after remotely wiping the contents of the iPhone, the iMessage credentials  are somehow saved by the iPhone, or Apple’s servers, and the person that ends up using the stolen device, either the thief or the person that buys it, could end up sending iMessages as the original owner of handset. In fact the new owner will apparently have access to any iMessage conversation you’ll have on any other supported devices.

The issue can’t be corrected even if the original user changes Apple ID passwords or moves the number from the lost device to a new iPhone, and Apple is not yet acknowledging the matter. The only available fix is an annoying one: users affected by this issue will have to completely delete the Apple ID in question and create a new one to use it on a new device. But in such a case they would lose access to their iTunes account that contains all their music, videos and apps. Therefore, this is not an affordable solution for most users.

While Apple has not explained what’s happening, or how to correct it, here’s what iOS security expert Jonathan Zdziarski said:

“I can only speculate, but I can see this being plausible,” Zdziarski told Ars. “iMessage registers with the subscriber’s phone number from the SIM, so let’s say you restore the phone, it will still read the phone number from the SIM. I suppose if you change the SIM out after the phone has been configured, the old number might be cached somewhere either on the phone or on Apple’s servers with the UDID of the phone.”

Sure, you’ll say that not that many people have their iPhones lost or stolen, and while that may be true, what about those people that want to sell their iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 devices on which they have previously used iMessage? The iMessage bug will certainly affect them too.

Has this happened to anyone of you? Let us know about your experience in the comments section below!