There are just some pictures that you don’t want your mom, your boss, or your close tjommies to see.

Unfortunately, if you’re the owner of a Samsung smartphone, chances are those pics could already on their way to their inboxes.

That’s because there’s a bug in the system that’s causing Samsung’s texting app to send random photos to your contacts.

Super awkies.

Gizmodo has more on this glitch:

According to user reports, the problem stems from Samsung Messages, the default texting app on Galaxy devices, which (for reasons that haven’t been determined), is erroneously sending pictures stored on the devices to random contacts via SMS …

The scariest part about this bug is that when Samsung Messages bugs out sends pics to other people, it reportedly doesn’t leave any evidence of it doing so, which means people may not know their photos have been released into the wild until it’s too late.

Great, just when the Facebook breach wasn’t enough, then this goes and happens.

Per the report, the bug has been experienced by a number of users, including owners of late model devices such as the Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy S9.

The issue came to light after a user complained on Reddit:

Let’s hope those were photos that the girlfriend has seen before.

People are trying to figure out what’s causing the bug, and they seem to be on the right track:

Currently, the prevailing theory as to what’s causing this bug is a weird interaction between Samsung Messages and recent RCS profile updates that have rolled out on carriers including T-Mobile. The goal of RCS (Rich Communication Services) is to enhance the outdated SMS protocol with new features like better media sharing, typing indicators, and read receipts.

This complaint from a user on the Samsung forums seems to support that theory quite well:

Coincidence? I think not.

The folks at Samsung are currently looking into the issue. As for T-Mobile carriers, don’t bother reaching out to T-Mobile, ’cause they say “it’s not a T-Mobile issue”.

In the meantime, Samsung users can do either one of two things to prevent photos from being sent out: either revoke Samsung Messages’ ability to access story via your phone’s app settings, or switch to a different texting app like Android Messages.

Or switch to an iPhone – duh.

[source:gizmodo]