If you’re an Apple user, you are likely familiar with spam messages via iMessage. A lot of them are representatives claiming that they’re “recruiting“. If it annoys you as well, you’ll be pleased to know that there’s a small fix that could help with it—because Apple can’t seem to sort this problem out.
The fix is to disable the iMessage feature on your Apple device. iMessage is a feature that only works between iPhones and other Apple devices, and the messages you send are a lot like WhatsApp as they use your own data or an Internet connection. With iMessage, you’re also able to use a bunch of features that you can’t do with SMS like Apple’s walkie-talkie voice messages, send stickers, GIFs, and others.
You’re also able to tell if you’re sending an iMessage or an SMS by seeing the colour of the text bubbles—iMessages are blue, and SMSes are green. However, a lot of Malaysians, including myself, rarely use the iMessage/SMS feature and use WhatsApp instead. So, since we don’t really utilise iMessage anyway—here’s how to disable it, while still letting through actual SMSes.
How to disable iMessage
If you have a whole entire Apple ecosystem under your name, you will need to disable iMessage on almost all of your devices. This includes not just your phone, but your iPad and Mac. If you don’t, you won’t be able to receive any SMSes from other Apple users—and instead receive the texts via iMessage on the device that still has iMessage on.
iPhone
- Go to Settings
- Tap “Messages”
- Toggle iMessage off
- …That’s it really
Mac
- Open up your Messages app
- Press on “Messages” on the top bar next to the Apple icon
- Select “Preferences”
- Under “iMessage”, remove the blue tick next to your Apple ID email
iPad
- Similar to iPhone, go to Settings
- Tap “Messages”
- Toggle iMessage off
Once you’ve toggled iMessage off for all of your Apple devices (you don’t need to toggle anything for your Apple Watch or any other device that doesn’t use your Apple ID to receive messages), you will now be able to send and receive SMS instead of iMessage from other Apple users.
Even if you no longer will be able to use iMessage features, you can live your life now without getting any of the annoying spam iMessages. Recently, some users have reported to have received an SMS from “GOV” about a special cash aid that’s disbursed through your TNG eWallet. MySejahtera has even clarified that they do not offer any financial aid or payment to its users, and added that they are reporting it to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) for further action.
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