
Android - SMS are intermittently sent to wrong and seemingly random contact - chrisbroadfoot
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392
======
JacobAldridge
On a somewhat related note, is this how people really communicate on the
internets? Thinking the 954 prior requests will be ignored unless I ask Google
to "fix it please" and reach the critical mass of 955 people asking them!
Better add "quickly". Or better yet, just throw in a WTF, and multiple !!!.

I can only hope this one is ironic - _"WTF!!?? I just want to say WTF?!!!?!? I
will never buy an android phone again. This is the worst thing I can imagine
in my life. Worse than the end of the world. Worse than the Doomsday. Just
want to say WTF again!!!!!!!"_

~~~
wladimir
Although people go over the top in rudeness, which doesn't help anyone, it's a
fact that a lot of bug reports by customers to big companies get ignored. So
the screaming is not _entirely_ unwarranted.

~~~
DeusExMachina
Not that it will take your complain any further, though.

~~~
wladimir
Yes, but if a rogue SMS message messed up your relationship with someone, such
rationality might be lost.

And there's always strength in numbers, if 2000 people complain about
something (ignoring the language), it tends to get noticed more than if 1
person would report it and the rest thinks "hey, it's already reported, let's
shut up and wait".

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starnix17
I'm sure they'll be fast to fix this, but how fast will phone manufactures be
to push this out?

This is definitely a real bug, a few weeks ago a text intended for my
girlfriend went to my mom. After you send a text and it goes through the phone
changes the name to some random other contact and there's nothing you can do
about it.

~~~
ot
> a few weeks ago a text intended for my girlfriend went to my mom

Talk about worst case scenario!

~~~
starnix17
It wasn't anything bad, but it makes me very paranoid to text anything I
wouldn't want public.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
That is probably good advice no matter how you slice it. It's not like SMS is
a secure method of communication.

~~~
xpaulbettsx
It's not secure, but you have a reasonable expectation of privacy using text
messages, at least as long as you trust the other person. Not "get away with
crimes" privacy, but "I'm getting so-and-so this for their birthday" privacy.

~~~
Cyndre
Tend to disagree with this. Recently had the htc touch diamond. Then got a
blackberry Storm 2 from the same carrier (telus). Bought the old phone back as
a present for a friend that was going to go pay as you go (but you cant).

Then my friend tells me hes getting my text messages. Every one of them. So I
get the phone back, call telus up and complain. The tech has me enter some
number which opens up the config for the phone.

And low and behold I have my phone number sitting in the phone. Deleting the
number stopped the text messages.

So lets think about this for a second. All I have to do to get your text
messages is enter your 10 digit number into my old non active phone.

I would say security in text messaging is non existant.

FYI: Happened christmas of 2009 so it might be fixed but I doubt it.

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davidedicillo
Interesting how everyone was talking about the iPhone alarm bug, but nobody
(in the mainstream world) is talking about Android sending out your SMS to
random people.

~~~
gloob
It's possible that I just don't hang out with the cool people, but HN is the
only place I've heard any discussion of either of them, and (before this link)
I had seen exactly one link about each issue on the front page.

(Edit: Were they talking about it on the TV news? That's about the one obvious
place where a lot of people would have heard about it that I would have
completely missed. That would make sense, actually.)

~~~
daleharvey
They talked about the iphone alarm bug on the news, it makes sense as well,
the android bug is a fairly obscure and hard to trigger bug thats probably
affected a few people, the iphone one affected everybody who uses the alarm

~~~
rimantas

      iphone one affected everybody who uses the alarm
    

Not true. I cannot comment on the ratio though. Alarm worked fine for me on
iPhone 4 and for my gf on iPhone 3G.

To make your statement true you should add modifiers like "on Jan 2nd", "those
using recuring alarms" and possibly some others, I don't know the exact setup
needed for this bug to manifest.

~~~
larrik
I actually had the iPhone alarm bug hit me on iOS 4.2 this past weekend.
Almost messed up a surgical procedure I had scheduled. Not good.

~~~
metageek
I'm imagining that you were the surgeon. "Appendectomy? Yeah, there's an app
for that."

~~~
larrik
Haha, no. In fact, it was my son's.

Nice play on words.

------
jakevoytko
Well, not for long - it looks like they have a fix:
<http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392#c1460>

~~~
rimantas
Isn't the situation such that this fix will take a long time to reach some of
the users? Sometimes as long as "never"?

~~~
masklinn
Well with a bit of luck it won't be 2.3 only, so yeah but not as likely. And
I'm guessing carriers are getting bitched at as well, so they're probably
looking into getting this one fixed soon-ish on the phones they "manage".

~~~
CWuestefeld
Maybe the fallout will be a valuable lesson to carriers.

They've (in some cases) loaded phones up with crap, and in so doing made
maintenance difficult. Any patch will have to go through their crapification
process, and re-testing, leading to customer dissatisfaction.

Depending on how much dissatisfaction the bug causes, and the degree to which
people clamor for Android phones anyway, carriers might decide to change their
attitudes toward crapware.

------
lwhi
Perhaps we should add a standard disclaimer to the bottom of all SMSs we send:

"If you are not the intended recipient of this message .. blah blah blah"

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nkassis
Hehe, makes me happier I don't use sms and just use email. If that happened to
email I'd shoot the phone. Seriously that's an odd bug, anyone looked at the
patch? How those the bug happen?

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Andrenid
This has me all paranoid now. I've never noticed it on my phone (and I send a
LOT of texts for work as well as personally), but now i've got this itch to go
back through every message stream for the last few months and check.

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elvirs
Comment 1013 by xiaweihua94, Jan 02 (5 days ago) oh come on that's horrible,
the message which is supposed to my girlfriend went to my boss. please fix it
as soon as you guys can

~~~
mcantor
Omigosh. I wonder if that's why my boss keeps looking at me funny lately. This
is no good at all.

------
rebelde
This is such a bad bug that I will be surprised if it doesn't get picked up by
major news organizations.

The fact that this bug exists is bad enough, but realizing that your phone
might _never_ get the bug fix is even worse.

------
AndrewDucker
The question is - if they have a fix, how will they get it out to people who
aren't upgrading to 2.4 (or whatever the next version is)?

Are people with HTC Wildfires and the like going to be stuck with this bug
permanently?

~~~
chrisbroadfoot
Dot versions are pushed, too (I'm on 2.3.1 right now) - so I suppose it will
be in 2.3.2 and presumably whatever stable version of Froyo.

I guess we'll see.

~~~
ZoFreX
I look forward to getting the fix on my Motorola Milestone this time next
year.

~~~
rikthevik
This is one reason I ditched my HTC Magic on Rogers. I hear all this great
stuff about new Android releases, but it's going to take months before any
updates get to my phone, and by then Rogers will have boned things up somehow.
With my iPhone I always have current (non-telco-modified) software.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Fwiw, Nexus One and Nexus S do the same for Android.

~~~
metageek
Yeah, this bug has convinced me that, when I get an Android phone, it has to
be a Nexus.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Just got my Nexus S a few days ago, love it :).

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pwpwp
Unbelievable...

------
yanw
<http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392#c1460>

