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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

Preventative step: set your outbound iMessage "caller id" to your email address instead of your phone number. Do this now, before you're bitten by the bug. (Apple's degraded QA as of late on iOS means you'll also have to change it back on ALL your devices on the account any time you add or remove any devices or numbers to iMessage or FaceTime on that Apple ID, too.)

This way, all your contacts are iMessaging with your email address, not your phone number. It means it will keep working when you travel internationally and switch SIM cards, and it means you can disable it easily via your Apple ID should you ditch the iPhone.

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Yes, this is a good idea.

But it's an extension of "stop relying so much on a non-free, proprietary 9-digit number as your id only to be at the mercy of your phone carrier".

Personally, I use a data-only plan and feel much better than when I had a carrier-provided phone number.

A data-only plan still has a carrier-provided phone number, and it will still default to that phone number when sending iMessages, happily ignorant of the fact that it can't call or text or MMS.

You're talking about invisible implementation details.

My iMessage/FaceTime are set to use an email as the only ID. No one else knows or uses my data-only phone number. Just like they don't know or use my IMEI number.

No, I'm not - it will default to using that as the outbound ID even on a data-only plan, because iOS doesn't know it's a data-only plan.

The fact that you must go and manually change it to your email address for outbound iMessages is the part that's invisible.

My iOS knows because it runs on an data-only device (iPad mini with cellular).

Do you suppose that might be because your iOS knows it's not on a phone?

What is a "phone"? Is it a device with a rotary dial? Or is a device capable of making voice/video calls. A cellular iPad mini, IMO, is simply a mobile iOS device with a 7.9" screen. It can make/receive calls similarly to the 4" screen iOS device (think FaceTime audio, Skype, VoIP, etc.).

This has nothing to do with the phone carrier.

In the US phone numbers are much more open than any other means of identifying someone you want to contact.

"non-free" is a bizarre thing to say in this context. No identifier is going to be free as in speech - that would defeat the purpose. If you want to have assurance that you can keep the identifier it had better not be free as in beer either - the provider of the identifier could revoke it at any time.

Some sort of government-issued communications identifier might provide the needed benefits, but actually the phone number is the best solution to the problem that we have.

If you're relying on an email address, you're in much shakier territory. (Unless you own your own domain and email hosting solution, and unless you're a multinational corporation it's likely to be less reliable than other options.)

>No identifier is going to be free as in speech - that would defeat the purpose.

I would say that a public key would work well as a free as in speech identifier. It uniquely identifies an address-holder, and the full software necessary to send messages using that key can be obtained and held on one's own. The problem comes when expecting an identifier to be associated with a person, since there you need a trusted authority to relate between names and keys.

I'm pretty sure it's quite possible and easy to create an email address, be it from gmail or another email provider.

That email address will be valid and accessible as long as you have internet access. You can travel, use Wi-Fi or cellular data, and it will work.

You can create a new email address for free.

In that context, getting a phone number is much more limited and not free (you need to pay for a voice plan, etc.). And your ability to use said number from other countries (roaming) is limited and expensive.

That would mean that others will see incoming iMessages from your email address rather than phone number from that point forward, and anyone who doesn't have your email address in their address book will not know who it's from.

I often exchange iMessages with people whose contact entry for me likely consists of phone number & name, and if I'm lucky, a photo.

[Edit] Just realized it also means that people who have both your iMessage-enabled email address and phone number in your contact info will be prompted on whether to send the iMessage to your phone number or email when composing a group message, and many will likely continue to select phone. Apple just needs to add the ability to disassociate your phone number with iMessage, and have clients check that status and update their local configuration when composing or sending iMessages. [/Edit]

This is true. Though getting an iMessage from john.doe@gmail.com who isn't in your contacts isn't as uninformative as getting an iMessage from +1-234-567-8900.

If you're iMessaging them, they either know that 1-234-567-8900 is John Doe, or chances are good that the content of the message is "Hey, this is John Doe, got a new number."

Hey, this is John Doe, iMessaging you from his email.

Touché. Though I suspect it might be prudent to further explain that that means they need to add your email address to your contact, as their mind will be blown at that point.

...just like they do when the receive a text for the first time.

This would work except you lose the ability to fall back to a text message. The way that iMessage is set up, if someone sends and iMessage to your phone and it doesn't get delivered for some reason, say you don't have data coverage where you are, then the Messages app will try to send a text message instead. If you have the same scenario where you are messaging an email address, there is no such fall back.

Disabling an Apple ID would also disable its use in the online Apple Store and the OS X App Store, though. Seems that you might as well just disable iMessage. It's not like it provides that much added value over text messages.

Text messages cost money. iMessages don't.

Depends on your particular plan (unlimited text vs. sufficient data), access to Wi-Fi, and how frequently your friends send images or media over iMessage. I have a friend who turned of iMessage to reduce data usage.

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