Your carrier may charge for SMS messages used to activate iMessage?

It poped up everytime I cancel it. Apple sucks. Thank you!

Well, yeah, maybe it doesn't yet suck but they seem to be desperately going in that direction, upsetting their customers is getting more and more common.

Hold on here! SMS is not the same as iMessages! This gets into where the came from or whom you are trying to send a message to.

- If the other party used an iPhone/iPad or a Mac system then the message it's via iMessage which uses Apples servers and is free!

- If the message came from a SMS source like a Google or Samsung phone or tablet then the cell carrier nicks you! As this is using a side channel within the phone service Vs a TCP connection which iMessage uses.

Apple is warning you and allowing you to disable SMS messaging so you don't get charged. As you are getting this message over and over again you may have an app running that is trying to send a SMS message to activate something or your phone is now a bot! As somehow you got infected with malware!

I would scrub the phone down and slowly re-install my apps to see if you can find which one was infected. There are some iOS antivirus tools which you might want to try as well.

Lastly, you may want to review your cellular carriers offerings if you want (need) SMS services.

@danj Better read this..you don't seem to be adding any relevant information to an already long debated matter

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/805...

Just to mention one of the many discussions about it..

@arbaman - Theres lost of confusion out there on what the difference is between the two services. And it can get very muddy as you can proxy your SMS message between your iPad and iPhone so the phone sends the SMS message. Which confuses things even more! Let alone the fact you could be tunneling either via WiFi!

There's a lot of mis-information out there.

The difference is how the connection is established using the cellphones carrier side-band channel or via TCP/IP which is how Apple does it.

The activation Apple is talking about here: If you get an error when trying to activate iMessage or FaceTime has to do with having a TCP socket connection between you and their server which is by-directional. In addition when using FaceTime your system and the called system need to establish a socket connection bi-directionally as well.

For simplicity sake we use the terms Client-Server and Peer to Peer in TCP/IP connections. Now what can get in the way is firewalls so while you can create a connection to Apple's server the person you are calling may not have an open socket established to Apples server for you to then create the Peer connection.

But none of this has anything to do with the cost of the message! iMessage or SMS. Only SMS involves your carrier's servers which could cost you a fee.

As to the amount of TCP/IP data your plan offers thats a different subject as you can easily runout of your allotted plan using any TCP/IP connection Web surfing, games, iMessaging, VoIP and SameTime calls (voice or video).