
AT&T Phones Adding Unknown Recipients from Different Area Code to Group Texts - dwringer
https://forums.att.com/t5/Apple/Unknown-number-added-itself-to-my-group-text/td-p/5293588
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pavel_lishin
It's marked as "solved", but the solution is just an AT&T rep apologizing and
asking users to report more information if they experience the problem again.

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valuearb
It's solved because AT&T knows what's causing it. Not that they'll tell you.

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rgbrenner
where did you get that idea? the "solution" says:

 _We are investigating this issue and are looking for more information to get
down to the bottom of this. If you do experience this issue, please send us a
private message. ... We thank you for your help and patience as we work on
this issue._

So they dont know what's causing it, and they have not solved it.

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dawnerd
A classic case of moving something that's bad PR to private communications.
Happens on twitter all the time.

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UnfalseDesign
Though many companies do move bad PR to private communications, in this case a
private message makes sense since AT&T is asking for personal information such
as the customer's phone number.

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aaronsnoswell
Possibly related anecdote; A few years ago I purchased a new sim card for my
phone with a large Australian mobile carrier. After popping the new card in, I
discovered ~10 real human being contacts on the sim that I had never heard of
before (not tech support or business, carrier numbers etc.). They had names
and everything. Contacted a few of them and couldn't figure out what the
common factor was. I lodged a complaint with the carrier and got a
personalized letter and call back from their state manager. No explanation why
though. Still baffles me today. Do sim cards get re-used?

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knodi
GroupText is via MMS, so these group text are routed via ATT MMSC. Which is
shit.

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bhaile
Happened to a co worker. Got added to a group text and has no idea how. The
people in the group text were surprised as well.

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ashark
Yeah, this solves (sort of) the mystery of someone none of us knew being added
to a large group text about a year ago.

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tuxxy
This happened to my brother and girlfriend at the same time.

Both iPhone users. We thought it was someone fucking with us, so I got the
CNAM of the phone number and creeped the guy out by telling him his name (lol)
and then we both came to the conclusion that something fishy is going on.

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otakucode
Sounds like a good way to make new friends! Statistically, you'll probably
meet someone interesting...

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5ilv3r
I've seen it and I'm pretty sure this is an android bug. I noticed that in
lollipop, contacts with the same number but different area codes are not
treated differently in the messaging UI.

Tmobile with an old cyanogen build.

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dwringer
This looks like it was posted in an Apple subforum, and anecdotally this came
to my attention because of someone I know with an iPhone, so I think that
might be a separate issue (or possibly a different incarnation of the same
issue). Also, in this instance, I think the entire phone number is
unrecognized, not just the area code.

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5ilv3r
Hard to tell where the problems are between the carrier and handset are
nowadays. Thanks for pointing that out. I missed it.

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Aloha
I was more amused that poster only has one kevin in his contact list.

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thaumasiotes
I'd bet a large majority of people have between zero and one. Name collisions
aren't rare, but collisions on any particular name, even names much more
common than Kevin, are.

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Aloha
I have six.

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kayfox
You also have 100s of people in your contact list.

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Aloha
Yeah, about 500 or so.

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apple4ever
Happened to myself and a group of friends too! Some random person replied “who
is this?”

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cgb223
Anyone with telecom knowledge have any idea what this could be?

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josh2600
If it's a group message I believe it's carried over the mms channels so it
could be a bug in the mmsc.

There are so many layers involved that it's hard to know but I'd guess it's a
caching bug somewhere along the line.

Source: telecom PM for years.

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richardwhiuk
There's two ways to do multi party messaging - Broadcast SMS, or Group MMS.
The later is more likely here, given it's a regular group message.

It's most likely to be a bug on one of the MMSCs, but could be a problem
elsewhere if the message is getting corrupted in flight. Alternatively, it
could be routing issue in a certain set of numbers.

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CodeWriter23
I know in iMessage, you can tap the (i) info icon then + Add Contact. And so
can a friend add someone unknown to you. But Occam’s Razor be damned...

