Should we merge or edit and differentiate these two questions?

Question

I've closed a question since I'd like to have one authoritative "My FaceTime was hacked" thread, but perhaps I've been too hasty.

• Apple ID /Facetime account hacked?

• Does receiving spam iMessages / FaceTime calls indicate my account is compromised?

What's your read on this? Total dupe and merge down the newer question to the older question or is my second comment onto a reason to edit / keep them separate for a while (perhaps even open for longer) to see if they're two different cases with the same circumstances. (some sort of unwanted call arrives to someone that isn't deeply familiar with the inner workings of iMessage and FaceTime and what is needed.

If the questions were all clear and direct, I could see a good question on the following without any really being a duplicate:

• What is needed to send an unwanted message?
• What is needed to register a bogus account?
• What is needed to actually compromise your pre-existing account?

Answer 1

This is indeed a fairly complicated situation because:

1. The newer question is lower quality - potentially good content, but there is a lack of all-important details that would narrow the field of options as to what happened
2. The newer question scores really nicely in Google - perhaps this is because it uses some important words in the title such as "Apple ID" and "hacked". I think some is more likely to find a question with those keywords instead of "compromised" and such.
3. The newer question also brings in the factor, that, potentially, the OPs contacts were used in calling contacts - this is an element that wasn't introduced in the older question. On the other hand, it could have a complete coincidence.

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1. The older question has a lot of good, qualifying information which is used to determine exactly what happened.

I think the key element at stake here is the phrase in the newer question where the OP states quite emphatically:

we received a Facetime call from our own email address and it was a complete stranger

Even though you can Facetime from any email address (@gmail.com, @icloud.com, @hotmail.com, etc. etc), to any email address, it seems strange that someone else could Facetime from the OPs email address.

Side note: One thing I probably should have mentioned in my answer is that, at least as of iOS 6, one really can't Facetime their own email address.

For the older question, it is obviously possible for anyone to iMessage or Facetime anyone and it seems much less of a "hack" event.

So, as it is right now, I see the questions as sufficiently different.