Accessing Messages and Social Networks from another iPhone

By Jesse Hollington @jhollington ● Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Q: Hey! I’m facing this problem. My dad’s buying me this new phone—probably going to be an iPhone 5. He’s using a Samsung S3 and he heard his friend saying that he connected his daughter’s phone and has access to her messages. My dad wants to try that. Is it possible if we’re using different brands of phones to do that? And will he have access to my social networks? Thanks! :)

- Anonymous

A: The short and simple answer is that without your specific password, nobody else will have any access to your messages or social networks. This is true regardless of the device the other user is on.

The situation your dad’s friend is describing is probably monitoring iMessages in a scenario where both parties are iOS device users. If you’re both using iOS devices, regardless of whether they are iPhones, iPads, or iPod touch devices, and are using the same Apple ID on both devices, then you are essentially sharing your iMessage conversation history between all of those devices. See Sharing an iMessage account between family members and yesterday’s article on receiving other users’ iMessages when sharing an Apple ID for more information.

Even in this case, only iMessages will be shared between devices. Standard text messages are not shared between iOS devices.

Regardless, the simplest way to prevent iMessage eavesdropping is to ensure that you have created your own Apple ID to sign into iMessage on your iPhone with a password that only you know. The same applies to social networks, email accounts, or any other online services. See our Guide to FaceTime + iMessage Setup for more detailed information on how to set this all up.