Hacker News Reader

Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like other people in this thread already get a lot of iMessage spam, so I guess you've just been lucky? And it shows that this attestation junk doesn't actually curb the spam problem, so it's just an analogue of security theater.

Anyhow, sure, if you want to give away your freedom to actually own your devices, just so you don't get spam... I guess that's your choice. I just don't want to be locked into a system where that's the only choice.

Regardless, iPhones also receive SMSes. If it's impossible to spam over iMessage, they'll just use SMS. If it becomes impossible to spam over SMS, then presumably Apple can implement similar measures for iMessage that don't require us all to have hermetically-sealed, locked-down devices.

View on HN

> Sounds like other people in this thread already get a lot of iMessage spam

Same folks who didn't realize that all messages show up in the same color, the blue bubbles only happen when you send. They're getting SMS spam.

> I just don't want to be locked into a system where that's the only choice.

Who's locked in? I can and have switched back and forth between iPhone and Android devices. My contacts are sync'd between them, calendar, mail, all of it just works either way. Only reason I'm back on iPhone right now is because the churn (and by extension, TCO) is significantly lower. If the calculus changes on that, I'll jump ship again, no big deal.

> Who's locked in? I can and have switched back and forth between iPhone and Android devices.

The cost to switch is not trivial for most of the world. And the cost of iPhones is high compared to the alternatives.

> The cost to switch is not trivial for most of the world.

Why not?

> And the cost of iPhones is high compared to the alternatives.

Given that the discussion is about switching from Apple being hard, this seems like the opposite of the point you're trying to make.

> Why not?

Because iPhones and Androids of comparable quality are not cheap. And many people don't know how to move their data and photos among devices regardless.

> Given that the discussion is about switching from Apple being hard, this seems like the opposite of the point you're trying to make.

You said you switched back and forth repeatedly. I was responding to that, since I view it as a luxury not everyone can afford. And folks who've sold an organ to get a blue bubble may have some sunk-cost fallacy to overcome even if they're only going from Apple to anything else.

> Same folks who didn't realize that all messages show up in the same color, the blue bubbles only happen when you send.

Doesn't seem that's the case. Folks have followed up confirming that the messages are coming over iMessage, and not SMS.

Did you think”no spam ever” was the pitch? Then you misunderstood.

The spammers mass send an sms spoofing a number that has iMessage. When you reply, it goes to an iPhone in the spammers hand. That way they don’t have to navigate millions of messages on the phone. Using things like blue bubbles, they can even interact via api and use a cms

iMessage users don't get spam from other iMessage users. Also, iMessage lets you filter out 'known' and 'unknown' senders. Apple also will automatically flag/block certain messages if they are clearly spam.

> iMessage lets you filter out 'known' and 'unknown' senders

Nitpick, that's not an iMessage feature, but at "Messages" feature -- the app. The filtering applies to both iMessage and SMS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com