The "iMessage bug" that causes text, video, and picture messages to go to the wrong phone has reportedly hit an Apple Store employee, and allegedly without his knowledge. According to a story over at Gizmodo, the staff of that site has been "spying" on the texts sent by someone who appears to work at an Apple Store thanks to the help of a reader whose son recently had his iPhone fixed by a store Genius. The employee's text messages sent to and from his friends now appear to be going to the reader's son's phone, which not only include some racy sexts, but also some "interesting" photos.

First, the backstory for those of you catching up. In December, Ars discovered (thanks to the help of several readers) that iMessages could go to the wrong iPhones and expose huge swaths of your personal information to a stranger. At the time, the premise was that an iPhone stolen by a thief could be remote wiped by you and deactivated through your carrier, yet when you set up your new iPhone, the iMessages designated for you would go to both your new and old phone. This means that someone who steals your phone—or even just an innocent bystander who found it—could register your old phone under a new number and still send and receive iMessages as you. Several readers told us tales about this happening to them; one reader in particular explained how he had conversed directly with the possessor of his wife's stolen phone, who was just as confused as he was.

After that story exploded on the Web, there was some talk that Apple was working on a fix for the issue, though Apple declined to comment publicly. The unofficial fix, however, appears to be that users can wipe the stolen phone, deactivate the SIM, and then activate a new SIM with a new phone. Although this process did not work for some of our readers, we were told by our own sources that this three-step process should work going forward.

As for why this happens, the apparent cause stems from how the iPhone is activated under a new account and which SIM card is sitting in the slot at that moment. If you pop your SIM into a friend's phone to activate it and then put your SIM back into your phone (with your friend putting a new SIM into his phone), the phone picks up your SIM's info and uses it for iMessage. In this scenario, your friend—despite using his own SIM card after activation—would still be able to spy on your incoming and outgoing iMessages as if he were you. And in the case where your phone wasn't stolen, you wouldn't even know your iMessages were going to the wrong place until someone told you.

That scenario appears to be the case with this Apple Store employee.

It seems as if the employee in question, who Gizmodo is referring to as Wiz, put his own SIM into the customer's son's iPhone to activate it before putting the SIM back into his own phone. (If this is indeed what happened, then we must say we're surprised an Apple employee had not heard about this bug before doing so.) Now, the customer's son is seeing all the messages sent between Wiz and his friends, which apparently include some borderline "sexts," photos that are inappropriate to publish in full, and other personal details. In one exchange, it appears as if Wiz is attempting to hook up with his coworker at the Apple Store. (Don't do that, Wiz! You'll regret it!)

The publication of some of Wiz's texts and photos aside, the story highlights the ongoing need for a simple solution to make sure users' iMessages aren't going places they're not supposed to. In Wiz's case, he can't even perform the three-step process until he becomes aware that others are spying on his messages—and even when he does, it will require the deactivation of his SIM through his carrier, and the reactivation of a new one. That's a somewhat time-consuming and tedious process—one that could be mitigated by some sort of software switch or even just an indicator as to how many devices are receiving the iMessages for that account. If I only have two devices registered on my iMessages, but four are receiving my messages, I can see that I have a problem and begin the process of fixing it.

We have reached out to Apple for comment on this story, but have not heard back as of publication time. In the meantime, does anyone have any new iMessage horror stories to share?