Last week it was reported that the Samsung Messages app had a bug that secretly sent text messages and photos from users' phone to their contacts. In a latest development, Samsung has responded to these user complaints and said that it is working to fix the issue. “We are aware of the reports regarding this matter and our technical teams are looking into it…Concerned customers are encouraged to contact us directly at 1-800-SAMSUNG," the company said. Earlier it was reported that only Samsung Messages had a bug, but later certain people blamed Rich Communication Services (RCS), or Advanced Messaging Update, on T-Mobile as a reason for the unusual behaviour. The telecommunications giant has refuted the claims.
In a series of unfortunate incidents, users of Samsung phones, including the Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy S9, were complaining that their devices are erroneously sending text messages and photos from the phone to randomly selected contacts. According to user complaints on Reddit and Samsung Community, Samsung Messages as well as the RCS Messaging update have been blamed for the behaviour. The users said that their Samsung phones are prematurely sending Scheduled Messages, the Scheduled text Messages are ending up in wrong threads and the app is incorrectly displaying scheduled messages as "sent" when the other party has not received them.
A user even claimed that his phone sent not one, but his entire photo gallery to his girlfriend via SMS in the middle of the night and that too, without leaving a trail of record in the app. However, he said, there was a record of it on T-Mobile log. This may be the most frightening thing about the app's behaviour because a user wouldn’t even know that his or her personal photos are with someone who he or she don’t want to them see.
What's the immediate solution?
Since the problem is reportedly with Samsung Messages, Samsung smartphone owners can go to phone’s app settings, search for Messages in the list, scroll to find ‘Permissions’ and turn off storage access. This will prevent Messages from sending photos or any data stored on the device to anyone. Users can also use Android Messages as default app to send texts till a solution is found.