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03rd Jul 2018

Phone users reporting new bug that is sending private photos to contacts without warning

Rory Cashin

QUICK! DELETE EVERYTHING!

It isn’t that we have anything to hide. Honest. We’re just being safe about these things…

In the last few days, a Reddit user reported the following:

“So… [Samsung] S9 have been sporadically sending the entire contents of one’s gallery to a contact via SMS, and it doesn’t show up on your side. Might be worth checking logs on your carrier’s site, because it happened on my T-Mobile Note8.”

Further complaints were posted to the Samsung Community page, all relating to a new protocol that rolled out earlier this year to Android devices to boost messaging capabilities.

Gizmodo have since reported that the problem stems from Samsung Messages, the default texting app on Galaxy devices, which is erroneously sending pictures stored on the devices to random contacts via SMS, and it still isn’t clear why this might be happening.

The scariest thing about the bug is that it leaves absolutely no trace that it has done this, so there’s no images or messages in your sent folder, so the first you’ll find out that it has happened is when the receiver of all of your nudes lovely landscape pictures tells you what they just got into their inbox.

When asked for a comment on this issue, Samsung responded:

“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.”

Until a proper solution is put in place, users are advised to go into the settings on your phone and revoke Samsung messages’ access to your phone’s storage.

Or, simply, use a different messaging app.

Or… DELETE EVERYTHING.

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