Apple Messages app

[HCHTech]

I am primarily an android shop, but we have field iPads we use for invoicing, notes, & etc. All of these iPads are registered to a common Apple ID. Yesterday, I got a message from one of my clients that showed up in the"Messages" app. I have never used this app before, and certainly never used it to communicate with clients. It was an important communication, and I only found it by accident.

For the life of me, I can't figure out where this message came "from". Is it a text message? If so, what number was the message texted to? Is it some special Apple SMS? If so, then how did this client find my recipient ID? What IS my recipient ID? The message sender shows up with first and last initials in a circle, like gmail on my phone, but my it isn't in my gmail account.

Worse, I found a handful of older messages in there as well - nothing important, luckily.

I hate these rogue communications because either we have to start checking this thing for messages, or somehow dissuade anyone from using this avenue of communication. It's a no-win situation.

Will one of the Apple folks here shed some light on this, please?

 

[cyabro]

When you log into your iCloud account on an iOS device, the email address from that also gets used for iMessage and FaceTime.
You can disable these in the settings if you wish.
Is the Apple ID email adddess a known public address?

 

[LordIntruder]

I just can talk about my iPhone. "Nachrichten" (the german word for messages) is just nothing else then the tool to write and read SMS. This SMS is send to the phone number of the sim card from your cellular provider you have in your iPad.

hth

 

[HCHTech]

Thanks, guys. The ipads are Wifi only, but the email address used for the Apple ID is my main company domain email. I did NOT receive the message in Outlook for that email, only in the messages app on the iPads. That's what I thought was strange.

 

[cyabro]

Thanks, guys. The ipads are Wifi only, but the email address used for the Apple ID is my main company domain email. I did NOT receive the message in Outlook for that email, only in the messages app on the iPads. That's what I thought was strange.

Well if the email address you used for your Apple ID is your main company email then lots of people will know it.
It's possible that they just opened the messages app on their Apple device and sent a message to that email address. By mistake maybe who knows but that's all that needs to be done. Maybe they thought they were sending an email but opened the wrong app?

 

[HCHTech]

It's possible that they just opened the messages app on their Apple device and sent a message to that email address.

I'll admit, I didn't really know how the app worked. So....it appears to be apple's own SMS client, using apple IDs as the addresses. Live and learn!

 

[Markverhyden]

Yes, it goes through Apple's SMS server. That's why you do not have tons of messages. And, to be honest, I'm not exactly sure how that is actually handled in terms of traffic. From what I do understand if the other party has an Apple device and a messages account then if they send me a message it will show up on all devices I have setup messages on. If they have a Droid device things behave differently and will only show up on the phone device it was originally sent to.

 

[NviGate Systems]

Also you might want to disable iMessage as Apple devices always default to Apple messaging systems when sending, users who switch to Android have this issue. Plus if you have Macs signed in with that Apple ID they too take priority for those messages.

When I switched from an iPhone, my MacBook would get all my texts from anyone using Apple products.