iPhone is confusing a few couples' numbers

January 29, 2024 8:59 PM

I keep running into this issue with iPhones confusing numbers. Description of the issue under the fold.

So this has happened more than once. Person A and Person B are in a couple - either married or otherwise closely tied together in life and technology. I try to text Person A and it goes to Person B's phone. Even if I type in Person A's number from scratch, my phone just pops it over to Person B's text stream. It's even so bad that when there is a call or FaceTime to Person A, it ends up with Person B. I cannot get in touch with Person A, no matter what I do! This has happened more than once and from both my phone and other people's phones.

This has become an issue now because in one case Persons A & B are divorced, and it's really important that we be able to reach the right person. And in another case, Person B was in the hospital and we were trying to reach Person A to offer support but just kept getting Person B (who was very nice about it, all things considered).

Is this something we can resolve on our end, or is it something that Person A and B need to fix on their end? Is there a term for this? Everyone in this scenario is an iPhone user.

posted by Toddles to Technology (6 answers total)

If I were you, I would open the contacts app on my phone, look at the contact card for each person, and double-triple-check that all the contact details (phone numbers, emails) for each person are correct, and that no phone numbers or emails are shared between the two contacts.

This sounds like the kind of behavior I see when I have a phone number or email entered into the wrong contact. iMessage is pretty aggressive at using your contacts to determine which person it thinks you’re trying to contact, and then jumping to your existing conversation with that person. So if you have a stray contact detail somewhere, streams can get crossed pretty easily.
posted by mekily at 9:07 PM on January 29

It's because they are using the same apple ID to do their apple store business. There's some messanger setting to delink it but I haven't had an iPhone in a while.
posted by Iteki at 10:51 PM on January 29 [7 favorites]

Best answer: Check if they're sharing an Apple account. Apple is deeply unselective about what it rings if the same account spans multiple devices, in my experience.

In a similar vein, check the contact: if the number is for one person but the email is registered against the other account that can also mess things up.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 10:52 PM on January 29 [5 favorites]

For text messages, you can send as a text message instead of an iMessage.
posted by nat at 2:25 AM on January 30

Best answer: I think they should open Settings > Messages > Send & Receive and make sure that their email address (Apple ID) does NOT have a check box beside it.
posted by dobbs at 6:13 AM on January 30 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This happens with my parents all the time, often leading to hilarity but mostly frustration. Every time I fix it for them, it eventually reverts to the prior setting because they are old, of one mind and one AppleID.
posted by emelenjr at 9:41 AM on January 30