[zipfle]

Presumably anyone exploiting this would end up sending such messages to many iphones as well, where they could not delete themselves. If there are no suspicious messages arriving on iphones, that suggests it may not be being widely exploited.

[itake]

maybe, they could check to see if a phone number supports imessage which would reduce the number of iphone users.

they may also blast texts out to android only phone numbers (maybe if you gave your phone number to an android app)

[mortenjorck]

That leads to an interesting security question: How is Apple's iMessage lookup service protected?

[hrrsn]

https://imfreedom.org/wiki/IMessage#Looking_up_contacts

[pd1]

> maybe, they could check to see if a phone number supports imessage

Is that possible? I haven't touched iOS in a long time.

[function_seven]

It's possible through the UI. I'm sure it could be automated, though I don't know how.

When you send a text message from one iOS device to another, it will be blue if it was sent via iMessage, green otherwise.

Again, not sure how this could be automated en masse, but I'm sure it's possible.

[stavrianos]

At the very least, there'd be a wave of unsolicited messages on android phones that don't auto-download attachments.