Ghost iMessage Swap between 2 iPhones

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I know I am not crazy, BUT:

I took a picture on phone A and sent the picture to a friend’s iPhone.

It said delivered but now it does not show on my message list on phone A and I do not remember deleting it from the list.

However, the message list on my other iPhone B shows the message with the picture.

Phone B does NOT have the picture in its picture file so I could not have accidently sent the message from that phone.

Phone A still HAS the picture.

How can a sent message disappear from one phone and appear on the other. Perhaps some kind of Blue Tooth magic since both phones near each other at the time? Perhaps some new option to mirror messages to another phone in my Apple account?

I also had just updated both phones to IOS 17.7.1 before sending the message but no other problems after update.

Am I really crazy??

 

 

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My iPhone syncs the iMessages to my iPad, and all my Macs, so the all messages show on all devices no matter which one I send it from. It’s in Setting under Messages\ Text message forwarding – lists devices that are in your Profile (the first item at the top in Settings).

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J9438

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Both of my phones under Text Message Forwarding show a caption iPhone (iPhone) with the button white (off) and no devices listed.

There is another option “Send & Receive” with 2 Addresses listed (my 2 phones). That does say uses wireless data to send messages between Apple devices but that does not suggest to me an automatic mirroring of texts but maybe it does??

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If there is a link below that setting on your phone, see if that explains it. Mine lists my devices under “Text message forwarding.”

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J9438

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No link, just that gray text “Allow these devices to send and receive text messages from this iPhone” and blank screen under that.

Maybe there is some overlap with that other “Send & Receive” option that says, “iMessage uses wireless data to send messages between Apple devices”.

I just remembered last year my neighbor had both of my phones in her contact list and I kept getting messages to Phone B when she said she had sent them to Phone A. I had her delete Phone B from her contact list and the problem disappeared.

Now today similar situation. The friend I sent to today has Phone B in her contact list but I sent the message from Phone A where I do not have her as a contact but do have her as a contact in Phone B.

So now I think it is something to do with which contact is in which phone.

So at least I know I am not crazy and it just some strange combination of options.

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I don’t have any smart phone, so this may not make sense. Consider: on both Your and Friend’s phones – delete all contacts on both phones to each other; reboot?; re-define all contacts. Sometimes ghost definitions go ‘boo’. (Halloween, any one?)

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J9438

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I have finally identified the exact settings that causes this ghost message.

Why should you be glad or concerned? If you want to monitor your teenagers’ text messages then you are glad. If you are having an affair then you should be concerned that your spouse is seeing all your text messages!!

Okay. My friend and I were exchanging texts and her messages to me were mirroring to my other phone to our surprise. Both phones had Bluetooth off so not Bluetooth. Both phones needed iMessage ON and if only ONE phone had iMessage ON the mirroring stopped. Both phones were signed into Apple so I don’t know if that was necessary to cause the mirroring.

Under the iMessage setting there is a setting “Send & Receive”. In that setting there was a list of both of my phone numbers under “You can receive iMessages to and reply from”. Both were checked. By unchecking the mirrored phone on my phone the mirroring stopped. You would have to do the reverse on the mirrored phone if you did not want that phone’s text mirrored to you.

There was no option to delete or add these numbers so I suppose the phone picks them up from devices in the Apple account. So you should check this list on all phones in your Apple account because apparently any one of these checked can without you knowing be receiving copies of your texts. Obviously this can be good or downright evil.

 

 

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