If you've got a Samsung device, you may want to keep an eye on your carrier's logs of your messages, because a serious bug is causing some Samsung phones to send photos without any action from the user.
Some users on Reddit and Samsung's community forums say that their phones are randomly sending photos to a contact. The issue appears to be primarily affecting the Galaxy S9 and S9+, but some Galaxy Note 8 owners say that they've encountered the problem, too. Some people say that only one of their photos was sent, but one person reports that their entire photo gallery was texted out without their knowledge.
The problem appears to be the Samsung Messages app. However, those affected by the problem say that there's no record in the app that those photos were sent. They only knew when the other person got their photos and when they checked their carrier's logs of their messages.
One theory that's floating around is that the problem is related to T-Mobile's recent rollout of RCS Universal Profile 1.0, which was added to the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge last week. However, T-Mobile has responded to this claim by saying, "It's not a T-Mobile issue" and referring users back to Samsung. Here's what Samsung had to say to Gizmodo about the problem:
“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.”
If you've got a Samsung device and you don't want your photos to be sent to your contacts without your knowledge, you can go into your phone's settings app and revoke its access to your storage. Alternately, you can switch to a different texting app.
This is a pretty serious bug for Samsung's phone and texting app. Not only is it bad that an app is randomly sending photos to a contact, but in one case it sent an entire photo gallery, and there's no record of it happening in the owner's app. What's more, photos can be deeply personal, and there are some images that you may not want sent out. Here's to hoping that Samsung gets this issue figured out soon. In the mean time, you Samsung device owners may want to take one of the two actions I mentioned above to ensure that the problem doesn't affect you.