Help! iMessage merging unrelated threads! How can I stop this?

Schmactor

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Help! iMessage merging unrelated threads!

I've made a similar post before but this is getting worse and more serious. Random people on my contact list and sometimes contacts of contacts are getting randomly added to private conversations. No one has added them, it just happens. Most recently a message someone was sending to a friend having nothing to do with me ended up in a private conversation between myself and that friend. The message was not intended for me it was only sent to my friend, but I received it and this third person was added to the private conversation between myself and my friend. This is a major privacy issue for all 3 of us since two completely separate conversations were merged for no reason giving people access to messages not intended for them. Similar things keep happening and no one can seem to tell me what is going on.
 

eyecrispy

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Re: Help! iMessage merging unrelated threads!

Are you guys sharing the same Apple ID? I've seen that happens when people are using same Apple ID.
 

Schmactor

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Re: Help! iMessage merging unrelated threads!

At first I thought it may have something to do with that but other factors show that it doesn't. For a while it was happening to my wife and I. We don't share the same ID but we do connect to the same mac and do have shared apps on each other's phones. But this last time, it was a thread between me and a friend 3000 miles away. Our conversation got hijacked (unintentionally) by a 3rd friend of ours who also lives far from both of us. Friend #2 sent a private message to Friend #1 which I received as well in a private message between me and Friend #1 with Friend #2 being added to our private conversation. If there is some logical explanation for this, people really need to know about it so they can keep private messages private and avoid this happening.
 

robertk328

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Re: Help! iMessage merging unrelated threads!

That is definitely odd -- have never heard of that happening.

If you go to details at the top of the conversation, is more than one person listed?
 

Ledsteplin

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Help! iMessage merging unrelated threads!

I've heard of that before. But I don't know the cause. Nothing is perfect in the tech world. My advise is to delete the affected threads and contacts, then add the contact back.
 

Schmactor

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Re: Help! iMessage merging unrelated threads!

Yes more than one person is listed now, but originally only one person was listed. It was a conversation between only me and one other person. The third person was added on mysteriously. None of the 3 of us had anything to do with it. It has something to do with the fact that A was in a private thread with B. Then when C messaged B it became part of the original A & B thread for no reason at all and all of us could see all of the other messages. This has happened more than once with several different people.
 

Ledsteplin

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Help! iMessage merging unrelated threads!

Yes more than one person is listed now, but originally only one person was listed. It was a conversation between only me and one other person. The third person was added on mysteriously. None of the 3 of us had anything to do with it. It has something to do with the fact that A was in a private thread with B. Then when C messaged B it became part of the original A & B thread for no reason at all and all of us could see all of the other messages. This has happened more than once with several different people.

Have you tried doing as I suggested? Delete all affected threads. Then delete the affected contacts. All of them. Then add them back one at a time. The group should be deleted. Then start over.
 

robertk328

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Re: Help! iMessage merging unrelated threads!

Have you tried doing as I suggested? Delete all affected threads. Then delete the affected contacts. All of them. Then add them back one at a time. The group should be deleted. Then start over.

and if you can't delete the affected threads because of the information in them, are you able to start a new one with just the intended person?
 

Ledsteplin

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Re: Help! iMessage merging unrelated threads!

and if you can't delete the affected threads because of the information in them, are you able to start a new one with just the intended person?

Well, I guess that's a matter of choice. If one refuses to delete a problem thread, then they've no right to complain. One can always take screenshots of messages they'd like to save. I don't think anyone knows how this happens. In this case, it's a group message thread. I think the issue is with one of the group contacts. So the contact would need to be deleted. Then added back. Whether what you suggest would work is unknown. I wouldn't want to chance it. I don't keep old messages. I have taken screenshots of a few funny keepers though.
 

robertk328

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Re: Help! iMessage merging unrelated threads!

You can certainly delete the contact and add them back in. Start a separate conversation with just the new person, rather than both.