How Has iPhone’s SMS Preview Gotten You Into Trouble?

Due to this horrible feature on my iPhone I refuse to let anyone use my phone anymore. I am a chronic texter and I have the most x-rated and crude convos on there. Here are some examples of what has happened to me until I finally decided that I would not let anyone see my phone anymore.
1) My father was looking at pictures I had taken at a family barbecue when my boyfriend text me “You were so great last night, how about a repeat?” My father couldn’t look me in my eye for months!
2) My boyfriend was looking at youtube videos and I got a text that was an innocent but crude joke from a male friend. Now I’m dealing with my boyfriend thinking I’m cheating just becuz of a chain text message that he happened to glance at!
3) A friend and I were texting back and forth about stuff while I was shopping with another girl friend of mine. The girl I was with asked to use my friend to look up something on the internet while I changed. When I came out the dressing room, she looked hurt and on the verge of tears! I later found out that while I was dressing, the girl I was texting started writing about the girl I was with and it was kind of cruel. Needless to say I got in huge arguements from both girls over that!

PLEASE APPLE, FIX THIS SECURITY GLITCH IN THE IPHONE!

Thank you.
-E

WHOOPS! Typo. That last occurence didn’t make sense…..

The girl I was with asked to use my PHONE (not friend, lol) to look up something on the internet while I changed.

Haha, thanks for sharing Nyprg. Three relationships harmed just because of this privacy issue! This is exactly the kind of stuff we shouldn’t have to worry about.

I totally agree! I found this site because I was looking for away to defeat the text pop-ups. I have a super jealous and paranoid girlfriend who is always looking around the apartment for clues. I have to make sure my mac pro is logged out in case i fall asleep or something cause she will invariably dig up stuff that is primarily on the innocent side but hard to explain. Just today, I began to receive texts from a female friend who is my muse; nothing sexual but she is special to me. Needless to say such a relationship does not jive with my girlfriend so I prefer to keep our dealings private. Luckily, my iPhone was not on the bedside table as my muse began texting. “When can we hang out?” and “Let’s get drinks.” were the messages popping up on the screen. I had to answer them, then delete them immediately, all the while telling my girlfriend that it was a male friend. Apple.. please, please fix this. I know you can do it. I used to work for you, now please do something for me (and every other iPhone user).

Yeah my Iphone was plugged in its docking station on my desk and the wife seen a text popup from my mistress telling me how hard she was gonna suck my ****!

Luckily i didn’t have the number stored so i said it was another stupid prank text from poland or such place

Funny and embarrasin stories But has anyone found an application that will remove these popups? I already disabled it through the password thingie posted by OP, but like you all say, when people are borrowing you iphone. Cmon you creative souls! make me an app!

I for one like the SMS ‘pop up’ feature. It’s sort of like a preview to see if I need to act on it w/o having the need to read the entire message.

You can get the caterpillar app. It lets you disable the popup.

Thanks for pointing that out, Limited Edition iPhone. I’ve updated this post as well as written a review of the Caterpillar app.

My mom borrowed my phone to take some pictures wen my friend texted me about the crazy weekend we had at my house while my parents were gone. Now I’m grounded and my parents don’t trust me

I txt all the time and I cantleave my phone anywhere cuz of the stupid text preveiw. I talk to my friend a lot and we get bored and start writing stupid stuff just fort the hell of it. Well when my mom was looking at my pics he sent “up the ass hole reeal good” u can imagine the confusion ……

not really an embarassing story about myself but my fiance, well we both have iphones, jailbroken of course, and we both do a fair bit of texting. That does include to each other while we are sitting next to each other lol. Well she got a very rude and crude text from her ex husband…. needless to say i thought it was my phone cuz both were sitting on the end table and looked…. only read the first 4 words and didnt need to go on… “i love you baby”…. now at this point i was thuroughly upset. I confronted her without reading the rest of the message…. this is how the message really went “i love you baby, but i know we can not be together. i will always love you” well i was quite embarassed especially after seeing the fact that the message she sent to him before that read “im sorry but i will never be with you again, i love my fiance. he makes me more happy than any other man ive ever known”. So to end this little story let me now say, neither phone leaves our persons…. and we try REAL HARD not to look at the others unless invited or interested in the current convo.

check out http://iphone.rustybushes.com for all your iphone needs.

my daughter likes to listen to my ipod or watch you tube and i am always concerned that i will get a text saying something i definitely dont want her to know mom is doing….. if you know what i mean.

Not funny at all!
My wife was using my phone to call our children and a text popped up “Babe, you were great yesterday, I miss you so much!”. Obviously, it wasn’t from my wife! Created a lot of problems, but finally worked them out. Wish I would have known how to turn that off early.
Thanks Apple! Should have known better

My friend’s sister-in-law spent the night (innocently) on my sofa after we had both been to a party. The next day, she was flicking through the photos in my iphone when a message from said friend arrived, reading ‘ Did xxx get her gob around your bollocks last night?’. I’m not sure who was more embarrassed!

We phoned my friend straight away, and he managed to deflect some of the damage, saying he was about to send an equally crude message to her! Cheers for that one, Apple!

I have a girlfriend who doesn’t understand that it is normal to text message with both males & females. When a message popped up that an ex-girlfriend of mine sent to me and about 50 other people announcing where she was going to be bartending that night, lets just say that didn’t go over too well.

PLEASE make the default to NOT preview it, and make it an option to show it.. DUH

Hey ppl,
I suppose the sex related ones can get into trouble but my story is fairly embarrasing-
I had installed a few new apps on my phone n was showing them off to my girlfriends mother when the message “Do u want ta c*m in my mouth or what?” appeared. I was staying in my girlfriends house that night and i had just got home from work. She had went straight upstairs with the knowledge that I was ta follow her up for sex and then she sent me that message not knowing i was talkin her mam. So as her mam was playin with one of the apps that filthy message popped onto the screen. It was a brief message obviously so she read it.

Just to let you know her mam is a very stern and highly strung sort of person so she handed me back the phone in disgust. I knew immediately that something was wrong when it beeped and I got that heart stopping feeling where you know you are at fault so I just put my head down and walked away.
It was very awkward.

But just to let you know I knew about this feature in Settings>>General>>Passcode Lock>>Show SMS Preview but the fuckin thing doesnt work and I dont know why. Im running 1.1.4 firmware if anyone1 interested!!

So anyway, APPLE you are a pack of bastards for having this feature and it should be removed.

Tommy, since your iPhone is Jailbroken you should think about getting the Caterpillar app. It’s $20 for 6 months, but that’s a small price to pay to save you from that kind of embarrassment again.

my step daughter was using my iPhone when Mike sent me one of his classic “I boinked this chick last night” messages. Well, the first few words aroused her curiousity so she clicked the button and got to see all of the nasty details. This, along with no pictures in messages and no text forwarding is a deal breaker for me! My old Moto flip had a security setting that forced someone using your phone to enter a passcode to check ANY message. I really miss that feature!

My wife playing with my iPhone and a message from my secret girlfriend sent me a message “missing u baby …”

So, I was talking about Global Warming to a crowd in Chicago. I handed my phone to the mayor and a text came in from Al Gore, “We’re going to make so much money off this Global Warming lie! Keep it up Barack!”

I was so embarrassed. I know people are retarded who buy into the fact that man is changing the climate, but when this came through from Al Gore, it made me look retarded. Wow… so embarrassing!

This is great, I don’t know anybody owning a Iphone, but if I did. I would sent that person this kind of messages all day long, just hoping that somebody sees them and the owner gets in to trouble.

By the way, I hope they fixed the problem by the time i’m going to get myself an Iphone

I was at my boyfriends house one night and my phone was sitting on the side table, my boyfriend decided to pick up my iphone and have a play with it. A msg came through from one of my girl friends that said the following. ” Hey! how good was last night i never thought having a threesom could be so good!! That was a great idea hope it was as good for you as it was for me, don’t worry i wont tell your boyfriend!!!

Opps!!

had a friend (female-no romantic history) who I hadnt spoken to in years text me just to say “hi hows it going” and whilst I was making tea my lady saw the screen.. suffice to say that its true that nuclear fallout shelters are bloody useless

My cousin was messing around with my iPhone when I got a text saying “hey, everything okay babes? x”
… from my boyfriend
I’m gay, but I haven’t told my family yet.
My attempts to laugh it off as a mate messing about fooled no-one…

Ahhhhhhh, Thank God this drives someone else crazy. Everyday I am sitting in meeting. I have to be real careful to not put my phone on the table face up. If I do, sometimes sensitive msgs come in in plain view for others to see. If this does not get fixed, I’m going to have to switch phone,

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Apple, address this. I love my phone but this is a killa.

thanx for this idea.. as soon as i saw the orevie i jumped right on it.. now if there was just a passcode that could get u 2 your sms..u kno the passcode to get into the phone and another that would get you into your text messages..that’s the app we all need lol..
ok im a genious..

You can take preview off you just need to reboot your iphone if it has version 2.0.2 go to http://www.appleiphonereview.c.....s-preview/
it does honestly work

Here is my solution, only works with jailbroken iPhones though. Go into installer, install a program called “Pysl”,then install another program called “taskbar notifier”, now reboot your phone. A new icon for the Psyl program should appear, run the program, set “pysl enable” to on, then go into settings, where it says “sms pop up”, press it to on, now press the home button, reboot the phone once more, now hopefully when u get an sms you’ll get tone/vibrate, a number will appear above the text icon, and a small bubble will appear in the status bar, no pop up should appear. works for me. Good Luck. Kim.

I wanted to turn the preview off just bc theres so many nosey people around who always want to know what your upto. But reading the stories above…it seems as though many people are cheating on their wives and trying to find a way to cover up. How about you just leave the person your with or have an open relationship? Reading this just shows how many people dont have morals!

I have concerns and issues with this text message problem that every one is facing and wonder when Apple will be doing something about. After paying all this money for a phone one should not have to worry about features like this. A company this big should do something about it or make a recall on the phones to compensate the aggravation that they have put their customers through.

I was on apples message board and didnt see anyone else complaining about this. I thought I was stupid for thinking that this is something that seriously needs fixed. I LOVE to show my phone off. I buy games all the time and sit on break at work and play games. Also my 14 year old brother likes to play with my phone, but I am always so hesitant due to this feature. I am learning more and more things that I can do with my iphone, but had I know that this really important thing would have been in issue… I don’t think I would have still gotten the phone. I really hope an app comes or apple fixes this in an upgrade. Thanks for posting everyone! Glad I’m not the only one.

Well Apple seems to have listened and done soemthing about it in 2.1. Having message preview turned off no longer shows the texter, just says ‘New Text Message’.

Apple actually did opposite of what everyone was asking. I didn’t mind it saying who the text was from when the phone was locked. We had the option to preview the message or not when the phone was locked. Myself and from what I read a lot of other people have a problem with the WHOLE message popping up while the phone is in use. Apple wasted time with that upgrade!!!

Awesome. It worked. Just says New Text, which is good enough for me. Now I just have to get my money back from that crappy caterpillar app which doesn’t seem to work with 2.1 without 15 hours of reinstalling

I haven’t had anything bad happen yet with SMS but I do have a related issue.

I have on several occasions let friends and coworkers borrow my iPhone after I have been on my Flickr account. They then are able to see all my personal pictures, nothing x rated, just embarrassing when I am out with friends acting stupid and someone snaps a picture.

I wish you could set the iPhone up to close and clear all web pages once the home button is pressed.

I’m married and my bestfriend is a girl. Obviously there’s conversation I’d prefer the wife or mom or whoever not see with my friend. Out of context those conversations could be hard to explain. Anyways. It would be an easy fix for Apple. Have a lock feature for guests–where you can temporarily hide or lock certain apps (i.e., SMS, E-mail, Phone, etc).

I love Apple but this is a HUGE OVERSIGHT on their part.

iPhone is an Apple toy completly useless for one of the main purpose of ANY Apple toy: to show it to people that doesn´t have one!! hahaha! just kidding… I can´t belive that I felt so more confortable -at least in the privacy and security area- with my five years old Moto!!! The pop up control is a good idea, but the basic concept of a four digits passwd would be a great complement, don´t you think? And not only for the text messages. I remember that my old palm (again five, maybe more, years old) alawed me to asign an individual security status for every single contact in my agenda (remember that?).

It`s so stupid that an instrument as powerfull as the iPhone is, completly lacks those kind of basic and elementary tools. I take that -sorry- as a full missrespect from Apple toward us, their faithful fans. When I think about this kind of issues I imagine somebudy in Apple telling me “Dude, what makes you think I even care?? haha (*evil haha*). I don`t have any embarassing story to share, but only because I don´t let anybudy to even see my iPhone a mile away!!

Hi, I own an iPhone but I can´t show you. What kind of Apple toy is this???

From Monterrey, Mexico, H

I was going to complain about the smsm pop up feature as well , but seeing how many cheating men have been busted by the application all I can say now is WELL DONE APPLE!!!

most of you guys are a disgrace. privacy…i agree. No one wants to read certain messages from your other halves….however those of you with wifes who also have ’secret girlfriends’. you’re the scum of the earth.

wait a min, my iphone’s a version 2.1 why can’t i find where/how to turn off text preview? someone help please it would be kind (:

Ladies,
You are 100% right. I communicate with my mistress and assorted girl friends mostly via text. Fortunately, my iPhone went on the fritz and I had to get rid of it and get a Palm. Almost got busted a couple of times.
Apple, please fix this feature so I can get rid of my Palm Centro.

This SMS thing MUST get fixed Apple, come on!

SMS messages are PRIVATE and should never be displayed. The sender has the expectation that nobody but the recipient is going to read it. And the de facto standard of all other phones work this way.

Imagine if your desktop email contents popped up on your screen. Geezus Apple, I expect more.

I have a really embarrassing story which I’m sharing for the first time with all of you

Recently i was at my girlfriends house showing her mom my new iphone when a text message popped up from my woman who was upstairs saying ‘hello’

The worst part is it costs my girlfriend 15 cents per text message! her mom was furious she was texting me and spending her money so frivolously.

Needless to say me and my girlfriend are no longer in contact and i still owe her 15 cents.

What feckin ejit spends that money on texts these days. Is it jus Ireland that offers free texts to everyone on any network. Anyway, was ur girlfriend 14 or what? I know ur takin the piss btw.

Maybe the people at Apple find it hilarious and purposely doesn’t want to change it.

I’ve had an iPhone since they came out and despite their high price and not even being close to perfect, I like them…my biggest beef is also with the SMS alerts that comes up.

My story:

This past year I hit middle age and for fun I bought a fast sports car and started seeing a few strippers. Both legal but of course not anything that I wanted to flash to my wife on a regular basis. But thanks to Apple and there lack of privacy options for SMS messages I’ve had to resort to giving fictitous names to my strippers so that they appear to be work related messages. Since strippers already go by false names I now have to remember three for each: their real name, stripper name and now my iPhone alias name….all because I use an iPhone! Let me know when Apple makes this right!

My ten year old loves the toy that we call an iPhone… so when it comes to life with a text or missed call, he is always running to check the excitement. I don’t really have to go much further with this for you all to understand the dilemma… be it a crude joke, or a sexual text from a lady friend “Auntie [insert-name-here]“, I am always paranoid of what he might see.
No matter how many times I tell him to NOT look, he just can’t help it. And to be honest, I wouldn’t be able to either!

Download ‘LOCKDOWN’ from Cydia (the application you get when you jailbreak your iPhone).

Use LOCKDOWN to set a password for any individual app including the iPhone native apps such as SMS, Email, Phone, Photos … literally anything.

It wont require a password on lockscreen, only when you click on the locked apps!

I use it all the time… stops those nosey buggers from accessing and checkin Mrs McDucky’s birthday suprise pics for Mr McDucky

Put the phone in “airplane mode” before handing it over. The phone will not recieve emails or text until U take it out of airplane mode when the phone is back in your hands…

so one of my girlfriends is visiting me. I’m texting my old high school girlfilriend,and she sends a text apologizing about how she was drunk texting me about how she just wanted to F me… anyway she says “sorry but that would be really awesome to f@!$ around”. and my girl hands me my phone confidently like… ‘explain this’

well I’m pretending she hasn’t seen it for now, but we’re not too serious since she’s going home soon, but just very uncomfortable and can’t act the same way as before… plus what if we have a future? she will always have this incident lodged in the back of her mind.

anyway she is always trying to watch what I’m doing on my phone now! sucks!

Apple, I’m not a player! I just crush alot! pleaaaaasssssseee fix this! privacy act!!!!

Turn Airplane Mode to On, and that will stop anything from comming into your iPhone. I do this while my kids were using it to play games.

Cam.

P.S. Before I thought of this solution, I tried to download Kate (Caterpillar) from RipDev (supposed to allow you to control notifications), but it was the most confusing install process ever, and never worked. I finally had to uninstall everything.

My 7 yr old was playing an app on my iPhone I and went upstairs for a quick errand. I came back downstairs, and he told me that he knew my and “Bob’s” secret. I am a month away from my divorce being finalized, and my lover “Bob” sent me a text saying how much he loved me, how beautiful he thought I was, and how he couldn’t wait to see me. I tried to play it off that “Bob” has a girlfriend and he accidently sent it to me. I don’t know if my son bought it. I just hope he doesn’t say anything to my soon-to-be-ex!

Settings – General – Passcode Lock – Show SMS Preview (turn off)

This will prompt you that there is a message but the message will not be displayed

@Shane Yes, this works, but if the phone is unlocked, like when someone is checking their email on your phone for example, the message excerpt will still pop up.

That whole passcode thing is a pain. If I knew I had to go to that much effort to get rid of preview. I would have stuck with my last flip phone and just used my PDA to surf the net.

LMAO @ London21, i can totally relate to this guys situation, im completly crude and filthy like with several people. For that reason NOONE SEES MY PHONE, its permantly locked!!!

I came from a solid, secure blackberry to the iPhone, i was very tempted to go back when i realised the sms preview couldnt be turned off. How rediculous is that!

Anyway, im hoping this passcode thingy stops it, the fact that i HIDE my phone looks very dodgy!!! Be nice to be able to leave it lying round and be safe in the knowledge that noone can access it.

APPLE SORT IT!

Well I had a problem earlier, my girlfriend where I’m stationed at didn’t have her phone with her and my chick back home sent me a drunk text ‘ im sorry i just want to fuck you so bad right now’ and a bunch of other garbled drunk text… after i got the phone back… So my girl just turned back and handed me the phone real calm, and I had so much shame but I played it off like it was nothing, because I am deploying soon I didn’t feel like explaining it all. So I figured out how to hide SMS preview, BUT THIS ONLY WORKS if the phone is LOCKED!!!

Also if I am looking at my phone all day to check my stocks, like I always am on iStockManger app, anyone can see my freaking incoming texts. So I’m talking to this new chick, and I like to keep my ‘relationships’ covert and discreet. I don’t kiss and tell and well, this new chick I’m talking to text me and this fucking looooser i work with saw it and now of course he is going to tell everybody in my whole squadron that I’m talking to this girl. Which is props for me, but not good for hooking up later.

WHAT THE HECK APPLE?!?!?! Do I really have to go through my phone and change all the female contacts names around? And if I changed to a guy’s name so my girl doesn’t get suspicious if she sees it, everyone will say I’m freaking gay, not that I care, but would make work a little more annoying than it already is.

Please fix this, not everybody has a girl that understands this. And I don’t want to horde my phone in privacy, I can’t afford to do that with my day-trading. And plus… EVERYONE wants to play with the damn iphone whenever they see it…

It’s like they’re doing it on purpose, PLEASE fix this in the future when you get bored of hearing peoples embarassments

Ok, I just got my Iphone and of course everyone has to check it out (the bling bling factor). My co-worker in the office next to mine was looking at some youtube videos and enjoying the hell out of my phone when the music stopped and she got a flushed look on her face. I thought the phone crashed on her, she handed me my phone and said do you know “*&^%$”? I said yes I do why? She said well she wants you to…blankity blankity her…yes it said what you are probably thinking!!! Now this message was sent to my phone in error but I could see where this would be a MAJOR problem and I spent several hours researching on how to turn off preview. Well, I eventually like everyone else hear learned that there is no way to turn this off. The password only dissables preview when locked…and of course no one will be checking your phone out with it locked…Right! I really can’t believe Apple does not allow this preview to be turned off completely…unbelieveable…or let someone else write an app. to dissable this. I hope Apple gets wind of this message board or others like this and fixes this pain in the a$$ issue. Ok, I feel better now!!

Finding messages that shouldn’t have been there has happened to this man’s wife. I saw msgs from a woman he admitted that he “liked” and subseqently discovered it was much more. It isn’t the technology that’s a problem -it’s the personal code of ethics of the users. But a good one to keep your spouse in a permanent state of anxiety.

Fortunately I just got a 3GS with OS 3.0 so I don’t have this problem. But I did read someone’s comment about men who are married but have girlfriends are the scum of the earth. Well what about wives who have boyfriends? Are they not the scum of the earth? Are women just not capable of cheating because I saw a few posts here that would prove otherwise.