iMessage tips: How to prevent stolen iMessages

2012-01-06 19:21:15 / Posted by Ivan Cook to iPhone/iPod/iPad
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iMessage, a new feature of iOS 5 which enables you to send messages to any other iOS devices running iOS 5 with your own iOS 5 stuff, say, iPhone for example. With iMeassage, you can send or receive text, image and video messages and these kinds of messages won’t be counted in your carrier’s messaging plan. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, with iMessage, you may come across a serious security problem: if your iPhone was lost or stolen, it still can receive iMessages to your phone number – that’s what we recommended you setting the Receive At with your email address in another article: iMessage tips. Even if you have wiped all data of your iPhone remotely, changed the password of your Apple ID, or moved the iPhone number to a new phone, your older iPhone running iOS 5 continue to receive iMessages!

In order to fix this misdirected iMessage issue, some have worked out some solutions:

Solution 1: Use SIM PIN to stop iMessages stolen

PIN means Personal Identification Number which you can use to lock your SIM. Whenever you restart your iPhone, if you have locked the SIM with PIN, you’ll be asked to enter the PIN code to activate the SIM, which means, if your iPhone’s stolen or lost with the SIM locked using PIN, you can remotely wipe the iPhone data and restart the phone, and then the one who use your iPhone will be asked to enter the SIM before your phone receive new iMessages or FaceTime calls using the old number.

But this method has some risky and annoy points:

You are required to enter the SIM PIN each time when you restart your iPhone;

You need to call your carrier to know the default PIN before you set a new one;

If you made mistakes in entering PIN too many times, no matter in changing the PIN or unlocking the SIM on your phone, it’s likely for you to end up locking yourself out. And it’s not available for you to enter the correct PIN code to unlock but only call your carrier to help you.

How to set your SIM PIN

If you’d like to use the SIM PIN way, you can go to settings, scroll down and tap on Phone, then go to SIM PIN option and slide on it. And now you are required to enter a PIN. If you haven’t set one yet, the PIN should be the default PIN from your carrier, call the carrier and get it.

Note: This method is not useful for iPhone 4 because there is no SIM card on the version of iPhone. And for iPhone 4S, setting a SIM PIN is not the best choice because the SIM card doesn’t send data to the network the same way that it does on the other carriers.

Solution 2: Wipe – deactivate – activate

Besides setting a SIM PIN, you can also wipe your old iPhone, and call your carrier to deactivate the SIM, then activate your new SIM. Enter the SIM PIN. This will make your iMessages all be sent to you and your iDevices running iOS 5.

That's all.

Stop iMessage stolen