You can't say it's the users fault. In my friend's situation the previous owner of the number was the one in control of whether he received his messages, not him. They were receiving all of their messages, plus any of his that were sent from an iPhone. You're living in a fantasy world if you think some random person is going to care about the fact that your messages are going to them.

That's the fundamental flaw in this whole thing. Hopefully the carriers notice this (my friend had to contact his 5 times before they gave him another number for free) and make sure that Apple has been notified to take out the number before the number is put back into the pool. It seems ass backwards to me that the carriers have to do it but Apple sure doesn't seem to care to fix it. It's been a problem for at least 4 years and they're only now starting to address it. The form is nice and all but if it's not automated half the people won't do it.

I know it takes years. What happened here though was someone obviously changed their number, but kept receiving iMessages through that number keeping the number in Apple's database long enough for the number to be put back into the pool and assigned to my friend. The iPhones should be made smart enough to see that the iMessage was sent to a number different than the number assigned to the SIM currently in the phone and prompt them to change there number.

I was made aware of this by a friend of mine who recently moved, he switched his number, sent some "new number" texts. And replies from his friends were sent to the person who had his new number before him. He's never had an Apple device. Ever, and he was affected by this, in a much worse way than the usual "you don't get your texts" explanation. He was telling people "Hey this is me" those people then think: hey this is Joe, I can be sure it's him because he told me who he is. They then could respond with some personal information, and Apple sends it off to someone else. Luckily this didn't happen as far as I know but it's a scary thought.