I have two phones, one for work and one for personal. I finally got around to updating to iOS 17, and noticed right away that calls and voice mails for one phone were showing up on both. Similarly, my call log is now seemingly shared across both phones.
This is a bit infuriating. For one, it defeats the purpose of having two phones, so to keep two parts of your life separate, as I’m now getting work calls and voice mails on my personal phone, and vice versa.
And beyond that, it’s a massive privacy gaffe for a company that supposedly cares so much about user privacy. For example, you can imagine family members or a couple who have phones tied to the same iCloud account, who are now getting each other’s calls and voice mails with no idea that this was happening.
I’m really surprised there aren’t more people talking about this. Is anyone aware of a way to turn this off?
I am not in the position to check if this is a new behavior, but to me, it totally makes sense that devices using the same iCloud account show all the data of this particular account.
I think that the solution is to have different iCloud accounts for phones that need to be truly separated.
I am not allowed to share and use personal accounts on my company’s devices for the exact reasons you have mentioned: privacy and security issues.
Also, regarding family members sharing one unique Apple ID:
I get that my answer is absolutely not what you are hoping for, but I think that there are legitimate reasons for those recommendations also issued by Apple.
I think that if it’s important to you that the two devices are separate, then you need two icloud accounts, one for each. The whole point of iCloud is to bring together the information on multiple devices, I thought that this was a long standing behaviour rather than a new one, it’s a long time since I had 2 iphones, but calls across iphone and ipad already did this.
This has always been the case if two iPhones are on the same Apple ID (iCloud) account.
I currently have two iPhones on the same account (with a total of 3 phone numbers between them) and have had a similar setup on occasions in the past. As far as I am concerned, this is a desirable behaviour and is quite logical as everything else is shared between the two phones as well – that’s why I have it set up like that.
It is NOT recommended to share the same Apple ID (iCloud) account between family members. Every person needs to have their own, and then use Family Sharing if you need to share apps and subscriptions. You are leaking much more than your call logs if you all use the same iCloud account, not to mention the mess you’re going to find yourself in when someone needs to split from the group for whatever reason. This also creates a mess if you ever buy an Apple TV, an AirTag etc.
As Apple ID accounts are free, and as Family Sharing is readily available, I really see no reason for not using the feature as designed.
I think I’ve started to figure out what might have happened here. But also not really.
On my primary phone, in Settings, I went to “Phone > Calls on Other Devices” and saw that my secondary phone was turned on.
I’m pretty sure this was turned off in the past, so I’m wondering if this somehow got switched on during the iOS 17 update.
In any case, I turned this off, and then went to my secondary phone, where I confirmed that “Allow Calls on Other Devices” is turned off.
So you’d think that this would mean the phones are now independent for purposes of phone calls, right? I tested this out by calling my primary phone from my Google Voice account. Only my primary phone rang, which is good. However, when I left a voice mail, that voice mail showed up on both phones. Also, this missed call showed up under “Recents” for both phones. The same thing happened, just reversed, when I did the same test but calling my secondary phone from my Google Voice account.
This is pretty confusing. I know some of you are saying that this is intended behavior and how this has always worked, but I’ve operated with two iPhones for a long time now, and I can tell you I’ve never experienced this before. And judging by this thread in the Apple forums with 12 pages of responses and about 800 people who have indicated they’re also having an issue with this, it seems there is in fact something new and unusual going on here…
The feature you are experimenting with has nothing to do with the iCloud syncing of call logs (and possibly voicemails - not a thing in Europe so I don’t know). This just lets any of your other devices take a call from any other device.
Regardless of whether you allow the iPhones to take call from another device, call logs will continue to sync as that is tied to your Apple ID/iCloud account.
I am not using that feature to keep the phones separate, and the call logs still sync.
@alexcr, that is an interesting discussion you have hinted to. It very well may be that Apple has changed something with iOS 17. It will be interesting to see if they change course and revert it back to the potentially previous behavior. I am not so sure about this being a bug, but a feature (“holding it wrong” ). To me, it for sure does make sense that all iPhones with the identical Apple ID share their data with each other. This absolutely is something I would expect to happen, if I was in this scenario. But I totally get that this may be annoying if this was not the case before iOS 17.
Regarding your discoveries on your iPhones: I have no idea how Apple is handling Voicemails (if they live on the carrier’s servers or on Apple servers), I would not be surprised if they live on Apple’s servers and are linked to the Apple ID after the carrier has delivered them, which would lead to a sync between iPhones that use an identical AppleID. I am just speculating without knowing anything. Turning off “Allow Calls on Other Devices” may get you indeed at least some way into the direction you want to (Allow phone calls on your iPad and Mac - Apple Support (CA))
@dario, I disagree with one thing: Visual Voicemails are a thing in Europe. It depends on the carrier if it does support Apple’s Visual Voicemails (in Germany: Telekom did support it from the beginning, the other carriers joined in eventually). What is not supported yet, is Apple’s Live Voicemail feature that is in beta with iOS 17 and available only in the US and Canada (according to Apple). More on that at (at the bottom of the page):
EDIT: I had mixed up Apple’s voicemail product names previously in this post.
Yeah, I’ve found at least a half-dozen other discussions like this in various forums, all from the past few weeks, all with people saying a similar thing: they just started experiencing this behavior as of iOS 17, and are confused and/or annoyed by it.
It may or may not be a bug, though some folks are speculating it might be related to the rollout of Live Voicemail, and that something might have gotten mixed up with that.
To be clear, I agree that it’s reasonable to expect different devices with the same iCloud account to share data to some extent, although Apple does typically give users control over what data is and isn’t shared. I also agree that it’s a bad idea for different people to share the same Apple ID. But that’s not what’s going on here; this is one person, i.e. me, with multiple devices.
What I’m describing here goes beyond that, though. It’s completely rational for someone to expect two different phone numbers to each have their own voice mails, call logs, etc… This is how phone numbers have pretty much always worked.
If some people are fine with or even prefer to have them merged, that’s great. But I don’t. think it’s unreasonable for others to be thrown off or annoyed by this, especially if their iPhones have never behaved in this manner up to this point.
Absolutely. To me “a different phone number” equals “a different account”. And this is where everything does make sense: if I do not want to intermingle data from different numbers, I do not put those different numbers into one account that alleviates this separation because this one account is being designed to bring data together.
There is a reason why there are options like Business Essentials - Apple that enable creating a separate business account for any person.
To a degree, you can achieve the same creating two different Apple IDs and using Family Sharing for the stuff you would like to share (like licenses). There are downsides, though.
Again, I totally get the frustration after this potential change. Given Apple’s documentation, privacy and safety implications and offers like Business Essentials / Family Sharing, I just am not so sure if this is a bug or a new feature that does make sense: syncing personal phone data between phones if they are in the same personal account. I would not be surprised if there were a lot of support requests in the past, why this syncing was not working in the first place (if it didn’t).
WiFi calling has nothing to do with iCloud or Apple. It just uses WiFi to connect to your carrier’s system instead of using cellular. Facetime is another matter (that does use Apple’s service) but the call logs are still going to sync.
I stand corrected on the popularity of Visual Voicemail in Europe; last time I checked it was not widely available.
I think people are confused on this particular issue because they have not taken their time to properly set things up. I have 2 iPhones on the same Apple ID account, with a total of 3 numbers between them, and Facetime/iMessage active on all of the numbers. I have been in a similar situation in the past, the earliest I can remember based on the history of my devices was around ca. 2016 when I bought the iPhone SE as a secondary device, and the call logs were syncing between devices on the same account even back then… so that’s with iOS 9 or something.
Facetime logs also sync between devices (if you have one iPhone and one iPad, for example), which I also consider to be intentional and logical.
What I’m describing here goes beyond that, though. It’s completely rational for someone to expect two different phone numbers to each have their own voice mails, call logs, etc… This is how phone numbers have pretty much always worked.
What identifies you as far as Apple is concerned is your Apple ID and not your phone number. Devices on the same Apple ID have access to pretty much the same pool of data on that account and so is reasonable to assume for the call history to be part of that. It would probably make sense for Apple to add a switch in iCloud settings whether call history is synced, though.
And, again, I’m not sure how you can say it’s reasonable to assume this when this isn’t how iOS has functioned in the past with respect to phone calls and voice mails, as evidenced by the lengthy threads on other forums from people who were also recently blindsided by this change.
I have no issue with iOS having access to my data under the same Apple ID. But, as a user, I want control over what accounts – phone numbers, e-mails, etc. – are “turned on” on which of my devices, instead of having everything dumbly merged. A lot of users want the convenience of iCloud, but also want to be able to customize how they use their different devices, and for what purposes. That, to me, is reasonable.
). To me, it for sure does make sense that all iPhones with the identical Apple ID share their data with each other. This absolutely is something I would expect to happen, if I was in this scenario. But I totally get that this may be annoying if this was not the case before iOS 17. 