If you own a Samsung phone and your photo gallery has photos you might not want others -- friends, acquaintances, anybody -- to see, without permission, you might just want to read this piece of information very carefully.
If you own a Samsung phone and your photo gallery has photos you might not want others -- friends, acquaintances, anybody -- to see, without permission, you might just want to read this piece of information very carefully. A handful of Samsung phones, particularly in the US, have been affected by a bug that gives these phones permission to send entire photo galleries of users to random contacts without their permission. Samsung is reportedly aware of the bug and it's technical team is now looking into the matter.
A fix may be on the way soon enough but as of the time of filing this report, no one, including Samsung, knows what's causing these handful of Samsung phones, to behave the way that they are behaving. Reddit as well as the company's official forums are being flooded by user complaints, the most shocking being one wherein a users' entire photo gallery was sent out to another person. Luckily for the user, these photos were shared with their partner. But the question is what happens when photos are shared with someone you don't want to, for 'n' number of reasons? Moreover, what makes matters worse is that there's no way of knowing if your Samsung phone actually sent a photo out of the blue. It is only if the recipient lets you know they got something from you is when you will apparently get to know of the happening. In some cases, that could be a little too late, as one would imagine.
Connecting the dots on Reddit and Samsung's official forums, it seems the bug has got something to do with Samsung's in-house messaging app, and the RCS profile updates that are pushed out by carriers in the US. One of the carriers in the limelight appears to be T-Mobile, although there may be others as well. RCS or Rich Communication Services is an upgrade to the age-old SMS service that has been built to modernise messaging services by bringing in new-age features like better media sharing and read receipts, much like it is in the case of instant messaging services like WhatsApp. An internal mismatch between Samsung's SMS app and some of the RCS profile updates seems to be one of the possible reasons behind the bug.
Although Samsung is working on the issue, it is yet to formally announce what's causing the bug and a probable timeline for a fix. The best thing to do right now would be to check into the permissions tab on your Samsung phone and revoke Samsung message's permissions to access your storage. The bug seems to be affecting modern Samsung phones like the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ but may not be limited to just the newer devices. Even older Samsung phones may be affected.
A fix may be on the way soon enough but as of the time of filing this report, no one, including Samsung, knows what's causing these handful of Samsung phones, to behave the way that they are behaving. Reddit as well as the company's official forums are being flooded by user complaints, the most shocking being one wherein a users' entire photo gallery was sent out to another person. Luckily for the user, these photos were shared with their partner. But the question is what happens when photos are shared with someone you don't want to, for 'n' number of reasons? Moreover, what makes matters worse is that there's no way of knowing if your Samsung phone actually sent a photo out of the blue. It is only if the recipient lets you know they got something from you is when you will apparently get to know of the happening. In some cases, that could be a little too late, as one would imagine.
Connecting the dots on Reddit and Samsung's official forums, it seems the bug has got something to do with Samsung's in-house messaging app, and the RCS profile updates that are pushed out by carriers in the US. One of the carriers in the limelight appears to be T-Mobile, although there may be others as well. RCS or Rich Communication Services is an upgrade to the age-old SMS service that has been built to modernise messaging services by bringing in new-age features like better media sharing and read receipts, much like it is in the case of instant messaging services like WhatsApp. An internal mismatch between Samsung's SMS app and some of the RCS profile updates seems to be one of the possible reasons behind the bug.
Although Samsung is working on the issue, it is yet to formally announce what's causing the bug and a probable timeline for a fix. The best thing to do right now would be to check into the permissions tab on your Samsung phone and revoke Samsung message's permissions to access your storage. The bug seems to be affecting modern Samsung phones like the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ but may not be limited to just the newer devices. Even older Samsung phones may be affected.