Why are there no apps to automatically forward text messages on the iphone?

[red888]

8.1 added text forwarding, but what I don't understand is why I can't download an app to do this(I don't have 8.1)?

There is one app I saw with this feature (bitesms) and it requires you to jail break your phone.

Clearly there must be some security restriction that prevents developers from doing this right? All I want is an app that grabs every sms message received and texts it to another phone number- why is this so difficult there are a million android apps that can do this.

I'm just curious what the technical restriction is that prevents developers from doing this. And to be clear I'm talking about regular sms messages not imessage, google voice, or any other proprietary messaging service.

 

[Bomb Bloke]

Less a "technical" limitation than one of "policy". If apps weren't executed within a sandbox that was specifically built to prevent them from performing actions such as looking at your text messages, they could theoretically do all sorts of nasty things - eg, email off all your personal data to who knows where.

You might think that Apple's "you can only download apps from iTunes, where they're all screened by our staff" approach might be enough to prevent that sort of malicious behaviour, but mistakes are made and occasionally apps slip through which shouldn't really be available through the iTunes Store. Those released over the years with console emulators hidden in them (eg) prove this point all to well.

 

[C DM]

The kind of text forwarding that Apple introduced isn't the kind where it just copies things from one number/account and sends to another, it's basically the ability to have your messages from your phone appear on another iOS or OS X device via your Apple ID and some other things, not just sort of forwarding things to another number or something like that.