iPhone Messages – Fix Auto-Sending After SIM Swap

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I have an iPhone 6 running iOS 10.3.1. I use two sim cards and when I swap them, I noticed that the balance gets lower, every single time.

This looked fishy, so I contacted telecommunications company, and they sent me the last 5 deals and I discovered that they all were messages sent from the phone to an international number 447786205094, and I checked it many times, and every time I swapped the sim card the phone always sent a message to the previous number.

I made sure that iMessage and Facetime are disabled.

What is happening here?

Best Answer

This is one of the phone numbers used by iOS for Apple to activate a new SIM card. iOS chooses a number within the same region as the device to avoid international charges. In this case, the number is a UK number, so if you are not in the UK double-check the region of your device and SIM card.

Carriers should not charge for this message, but if you have been charged, contact the carrier and ask that they resolve the situation. A warning is displayed the very first time activation is performed, warning that ‘your carrier may charge for SMS messages used to activate iMessage’.