It sure sounds like you're talking about restoring from backups. There's nothing in that article that suggests you'd normally be able to sync iMessages to a new

It sure sounds like you're talking about restoring from backups. There's nothing in that article that suggests you'd normally be able to sync iMessages to a new device apart from restoring from a backup. And that's expected behavior. I just noticed that you misquoted me.. I said iMessage syncing has always been maximally private, and drew a distinction between that and backups. The article you cite mentions the tradeoff between strong cryptography (maximal privacy) and user pain (losing your data forever). Apple has made the intentional design choice of enabling the former for syncing but allowing backups to survive an account password reset. I think it's pretty clear that's a good choice for a consumer device. You can always turn off iCloud backups and back up locally via iTunes if you want maximal backup privacy.