A potential bug in early versions of iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 causes the appearance of fake missed FaceTime call notifications. I noticed that first when missed call notifications from my colleague Anne Marie appeared on my iPhone. Upon returning the call, she told me that she never called. I was puzzled but didn’t think much of it. Then I noticed a pattern. Every time I missed a FaceTime call, iOS logged an additional missed call from Anne Marie. Both missed calls had the same timestamp. The screenshots below show the fake missed FaceTime call notifications.
Fake missed FaceTime call from my alter ego
Yesterday I returned home from a meeting, and while chatting with my wife, I heard my computer ring. I didn’t answer the call, but when I later looked who had called, I saw my name in the missed call tab. I clicked on my name and noticed that apparently, I called myself from my landline.
That was enough reason to do what I enjoy most, schedule a call Apple’s Joint Venture Genius support. While on the phone with Apple we couldn’t reproduce the problem. As far as I remember the issue so far only occurred when I missed calls while all my devices were idle and not in use. During the call with Apple, I was on my Mac, which could have affected the testing.
Temporary fix
To further isolate the first problem, we decided it would be best if I deleted Anne Marie’s contact card from iCloud and Exchange completely and then re-entered it manually. The second issue was a one-time occurrence so far, and there isn’t much I can do to isolate it. The call logs of my landline don’t show any incoming, outgoing or missed calls.
Removing Anne Marie’s contact completely and re-adding it manually seemed to have solved the issue. The missed call notification associated with my name turned out to be a marketer spoofing his caller ID with my number to get me to pick up.
Missed FaceTime call notifications returned
Yesterday fake missed FaceTime call notifications started re-appearing. This time I show missed FaceTime audio calls from my brother. Plus, a friend of mine told me, ironically during a FaceTime call, that he has missed FaceTime audio calls on his wife’s iPhone with random caller ID’s from countries he doesn’t know anyone from. So this appears to be more widespread than I thought and I guess I’ll file a bug report with Apple.
Fixed: Fake missed FaceTime call notifications
Since updating all my devices to iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3, I have not seen the issue occur again. Not sure what caused it but it seems to be finally fixed.
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sorry i missed your call
sorry missed your call
I received 3 fake FaceTime calls from my boyfriends phone number not apple ID but he was sitting right next to me and didn’t even touch his phone. We checked his call log and there was nothing there. I then returned the missed FaceTime calls and his phone rang.
Someone spoofed his number to call you. That’s why you saw your boyfriend’s caller ID.
I though of the spoofed number but figure that would be one hell of a coincidence.
We were woken up at 3 a.m. to my wife’s phone getting a facetime call from my phone, which was on the night stand. Checked my phone and no call was placed. Scratching my head.
Could have also been a scammer who faked your wife’s caller ID. The last time I got a call from my own number, it came from a scammer.
I have an iPhone 6 and received 2 missed face time calls today from my girl friend showing her phone# but she doesn’t have an iPhone she has a Android. How could this be??
I just updated my iPad and now I am getting fake calls. I went to settings like it said and turned off the calls but my iPad still rings. My cell phone is not ringing nor is any other Apple devices. What can I do?
I just woke up to a face time call from myself… all my devices are here in my room…. so odd…
Inquiring minds…..
Imy iPhone 6 keeps placing random FaceTime calls. I’ve seen it 4 times in the past month…3 of the times I wasn’t even holding my phone. I heard it ringing and thought I was being called, but then realized it was my phone making the call. Last one just happened at 9:00pm ET on July 28, 2015. Did you get any update on your issues?
Hi Jeff,
I kept upgrading iOS and OS X and the issue went gradually away. Now I’m on iOS 9 Public Beta 2 and OS X 10.11 Public Beta 2 and have yet to experience any fake calls.
I guessing the issue (same as the keyboard shortcuts that kept reappearing) was fixed or is being fixed on the backend at Apple and there isn’t much that we can do on the front-end.
Cheers
Michael
Sometimes I wonder if it’s a Bluetooth issue like iTunes randomly playing music. Just going on the timing of it all. I have no idea what I’m really talking about because all this leaves me so clueless.
This is still happening to me and I am using 8.4. The “missed calls” are purporting to come from my brother in Australia but he denies all knowledge of them – especially since it is usually 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning there.
This is happening to me as well, every few days. However, I don’t think it’s related to the wifi networks. It happened to me again this morning, the missed Facetime call showing up on my iPhone when I was at home on my home network and my iPad was at work on my work network. The funny thing is, this time around, it showed on my iPhone as being “answered on other device” but when I got to work and checked my iPad call log, there was no record of the call. Called the person who supposedly called me and she said hadn’t called me and even sent me a screenshot of her call log. I have no other devices so the mystery continues, I guess.
Is any of the devices that you recieve missed calls from connected to the same WIFI network as you? I think this must be a ios bug, posssibly related to “handoff” feature.
it sounds like that’s what it is, since the devices are usually connected to the same network.
I have been getting this same issue repeatedly for the last 3-4 weeks. I’m updating to new iOS today in hopes it fixes it. Any one solve this problem yet?
I am having the same issue with my daughters iPod Apple id showing up as missed FaceTime audio calls when her device is sitting right here with me an off. Only her id is doing it though. I call it back from the missed audio and her device isn’t ringing so it isn’t actually her id it is just showing up as her id. We even changed her password on her iCloud account to make sure she want hacked and it still does it. And it always shows up as 2 missed calls with same time stamp.
I have the exact same thing happening…let me know if you figure out how to fix it
I have removed the contact that kept reappearing as a missed call and so far haven’t seen the issue again.
I’ll take that back – see Update #2 above :)