10-09-2012, 07:43 PM
Last night my wife shared a photo stream with me, but not to my iCloud account but rather another email I frequently use. Almost immediately it was accepted... but by my mom. How did my mom get the photo stream invite when it was shared privately with my email address? I set up her new iPhone5 last week. Used her email as her Apple ID and then realized during set up that if I wanted to back up to iCloudI'd have to create her an iCloud account as well. So those 2 addresses are the only things in the iCloud settings, Mail Contacts and Calendars, and Messages settings. And same thing for my phone, none of her info is in my phone.
I call Apple and they have me check those settings again anyway and then the guy leaves me by saying I should remove all the photo stream shares on all the phones and turn off stream sharing. This didn't work. He has someone call me back while I do that instead of waiting for me to complete the task. I get a call back from a guy who verifies all the same things again before sending me up the chain to tier 2 or whatever he called it. The new guy says that it sounds like I've troubleshot everything already and wants me to restore my moms phone. The problem is he wants me to restore it to factory and set up everything again. I tell him that I don't see how it could be a problem with the phone, that my account info has never been on her phone, her apple id is brand new, She's never plugged her phone into my computer or synced with my iTunes and in fact she's never plugged her phone into a computer at all and likewise I haven't plugged my phone into a computer since I got it or do I have any of her info on my phone. He reiterates that I have to restore the phone.
It's at this point I ask, is it possible there is something wrong with your servers? Can you check her account to see if my email is linked somehow to her Apple ID? He refuses and says if there's something wrong with their servers then restoring the phone to factory will fix the issue. Then I ask, didn't you have a problem not too long ago where people were getting random iMessage texts that didn't belong to them? At this point he becomes border line irate and firmly tells me just because they had an issue in the past that is unrelated doesn't mean that is the issue now. To which I respond, "Of course, but we can't rule out the possibility that it's an issue on your end."
So he tells me to call him back when I can restore and I go to write down his info, he tells me don't worry that he will email it to me. Of course, he didn't email me anything. Later on that night I started thinking, this is crazy, are other people getting photo stream sharing notifications that were meant for me? Then I remember that when I set up my mom's apple id I made that email the emergency contact in case she forgot her password and security questions. Sure enough I log in and I see my email partially blacked out as what it emails when you want to reset your security questions or when you say you forgot your password and don't want to retrieve it by answering the questions. However, there is no way to delete that email from the account and it doesn't show up in the list of linked apple id emails at all. So there's no reason she should be getting those invites anyway. Again, this isn't an alternate Apple ID email or anything and there's no way that I can remove it even having full access to the Apple ID account.
In conclusion, if you want to get Photo streams shared with someone that isn't you, create a new iCloud account and put that persons email as your emergency email address. The photo streams sent to that emergency addresses will be shared with your iCloud account. You won't get an email about the shared photo stream, the other person will, but the iCloud account on your phone will get a notification and the shared stream will be available in your photos app. At least that's the way it's been from my "testing".
This is the first time I've ever had a problem with Apple support that I can recall. Every other time I was treated like a competent user, not like the problem is obviously my fault and if I can't figure it out I should just restore. FDISK, Format, reinstall is for windows users...
I call Apple and they have me check those settings again anyway and then the guy leaves me by saying I should remove all the photo stream shares on all the phones and turn off stream sharing. This didn't work. He has someone call me back while I do that instead of waiting for me to complete the task. I get a call back from a guy who verifies all the same things again before sending me up the chain to tier 2 or whatever he called it. The new guy says that it sounds like I've troubleshot everything already and wants me to restore my moms phone. The problem is he wants me to restore it to factory and set up everything again. I tell him that I don't see how it could be a problem with the phone, that my account info has never been on her phone, her apple id is brand new, She's never plugged her phone into my computer or synced with my iTunes and in fact she's never plugged her phone into a computer at all and likewise I haven't plugged my phone into a computer since I got it or do I have any of her info on my phone. He reiterates that I have to restore the phone.
It's at this point I ask, is it possible there is something wrong with your servers? Can you check her account to see if my email is linked somehow to her Apple ID? He refuses and says if there's something wrong with their servers then restoring the phone to factory will fix the issue. Then I ask, didn't you have a problem not too long ago where people were getting random iMessage texts that didn't belong to them? At this point he becomes border line irate and firmly tells me just because they had an issue in the past that is unrelated doesn't mean that is the issue now. To which I respond, "Of course, but we can't rule out the possibility that it's an issue on your end."
So he tells me to call him back when I can restore and I go to write down his info, he tells me don't worry that he will email it to me. Of course, he didn't email me anything. Later on that night I started thinking, this is crazy, are other people getting photo stream sharing notifications that were meant for me? Then I remember that when I set up my mom's apple id I made that email the emergency contact in case she forgot her password and security questions. Sure enough I log in and I see my email partially blacked out as what it emails when you want to reset your security questions or when you say you forgot your password and don't want to retrieve it by answering the questions. However, there is no way to delete that email from the account and it doesn't show up in the list of linked apple id emails at all. So there's no reason she should be getting those invites anyway. Again, this isn't an alternate Apple ID email or anything and there's no way that I can remove it even having full access to the Apple ID account.
In conclusion, if you want to get Photo streams shared with someone that isn't you, create a new iCloud account and put that persons email as your emergency email address. The photo streams sent to that emergency addresses will be shared with your iCloud account. You won't get an email about the shared photo stream, the other person will, but the iCloud account on your phone will get a notification and the shared stream will be available in your photos app. At least that's the way it's been from my "testing".
This is the first time I've ever had a problem with Apple support that I can recall. Every other time I was treated like a competent user, not like the problem is obviously my fault and if I can't figure it out I should just restore. FDISK, Format, reinstall is for windows users...
