Shocking Android bug: SMS being sent to wrong contact

January 1, 2011

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392

Has anyone had this happening on the blade?

I think it happened to me once on the stock ROM, sending a text to a friend then suddenly receiving a response from my mum :unsure: Thankfully it was innocuous.

January 1, 2011

Is it this symptom ?

http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blad...44/sms-problem/

I use GoSMS, has never happened to me before.

Edited January 1, 2011 by PeaNut_HU

January 1, 2011

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392

Has anyone had this happening on the blade?
I think it happened to me once on the stock ROM, sending a text to a friend then suddenly receiving a response from my mum :unsure: Thankfully it was innocuous.

B)

no. i wonder where the bug is. i use handcent now so if in stock messenger app, then hopefully, i'm immune!

January 1, 2011

Is it this symptom ?
http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blad...44/sms-problem/

I use GoSMS, has never happened to me before.

I'm not sure if that is the same problem as there are apparently two bugs affecting Android SMS:

Android still has horrible text messaging bugs that'll get you fired, busted, or otherwise embarrassed

Pardon us if the headline is a little sensational, but this is one that we've personally experienced -- and it's not pretty. For at least the last couple versions, Android has been plagued with a couple extremely serious bugs in its text messaging subsystem that can ultimately end up causing you to text the wrong contact -- even contacts that you've never texted before. There appear to be a few failure modes; the one we definitely experience on the Gingerbread-powered Nexus S involves being routed to the wrong thread when you tap it either in the Notifications list or the master thread list in the Messaging application, so if you don't notice, you'll end up firing a message to the wrong person.

More seriously, though, there's also an open issue in Android's bug tracking system -- inexplicably marked "medium" priority -- where sent text messages can appear to be in the correct thread and still end up being sent to another contact altogether. In other words, unless you pull up the Message Details screen after the fact, you might not even know the grievous act you've committed until your boss, significant other, or best friend -- make that former best friend -- texts you back. There seem to have been some attempts on Google's part over the year to fix it; we can't confirm that it still happens in 2.3, but for what it's worth, the issue hasn't been marked resolved in Google Code... and it was opened some six months ago.

This is akin to an alarm clock that occasionally won't go off (we've been there) or a car that randomly won't let you turn the steering wheel -- you simply cannot have a phone that you can't trust to communicate with the right people. It's a deal-breaker. We're pretty shocked that these issues weren't tied up and blasted to all affected phones as an over-the-air patch months ago, but whatever the reason, we'd like to see Google, manufacturers, and carriers drop every other Android update they're working on and make sure this is completely resolved immediately.

Edited January 1, 2011 by Carlos Abel Chavez Slim

January 1, 2011

Never had this problem (as far as I know).

Looks like the bug is present in versions up to and including 2.3 :unsure:

January 1, 2011

Google have now (6 months later) changed priority to critical.

January 2, 2011

That is an appalling bug. Good lord. How hard is it to program to send the right recipient. This is in Froyo right ?

January 2, 2011

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392

Has anyone had this happening on the blade?
I think it happened to me once on the stock ROM, sending a text to a friend then suddenly receiving a response from my mum :unsure: Thankfully it was innocuous.

I read this in the link. Shocking bug.

If anyone is interested, evidently "Darth Mo" has been able to replicate it - found in ACentral Forums - entire post follows;

"It's not user error, or at least it's a combination of user technique and a possible design. It has to do with how the stock messaging app interacts with the Android system notification.

I recreated it this way. Open a text, but only from the notification bar. You will be taken directly to the conversation from that contact. Now, just hit the home button to get back to the home screen. Repeat this four times to let the open conversations build up. We'll call the earliest contact 1, the next 2, etc. for this example. Let's say you converse with these contacts over some time so that messages occur in this chronological order (opened from the notification menu if possible) : 1, you, 2, you, 3, you, 4, you, 1, 3, you, 3.

Now, you've read the message from contact 3, but quickly hit the back button because you need to send a message to contact 4. So you're back at the conversation list and select conversation 4. You compose and send your message and off you go. But, what can actually happen is that your message went to contact 1 because there is a bug that when you use the back button, it will take you to the conversation screen and when you select one, it will take you to the conversation with the last "unreplied" message received before the last conversation you didn't reply to, regardless of the one you actually select from the list. It's easy to miss that it took you to the wrong conversation as the on screen info can take a beat to update and it looks like you've select the right conversation. The kicker is the conversation list does highlight the one you meant to select, but will take you to that other conversation. It's as if it's saying, "Hey, I know you want to go to that one, but you opened this message and jumped out of it without replying. Maybe you didn't see it."

It's pretty easy for people to not have seen this for a few reasons:

1. You open messages directly from the messaging app

2. You close out every conversation using the back button and don't let them build up on top of each other

3. Messages can come in such a sequence that the conditions are never correct

4. It has actually happened, only the last "unreplied" message was from the conversation you actually intended to enter

I was able to create reliably using my Google voice number to send myself text and watched it bounce around conversations seemingly randomly. It was only when I looked at the times of each message with no replies that I saw what it was doing actually had order to it.

About 30 minutes of experimentation to figure it out, but I had to know how this was happening as I could see it leading to an egregious error later. Now to explain it to HTC..."

January 2, 2011

I saw this story on Engadget and while it's a dreadful bug you have to weight the criticality on expected frequency x severity. The severity is extreme as you could end up sending something very, very bad to someone you really would not like to see it but, and here's the rub, not a single person on MoDaCo has started a thread to complain about this bug before today. By member count that's some 1 million forum users (lets assume - conservatively - 300,000 Android users) and with all those SMS not one single person has opened a thread about this.

I can see why they made this a medium priority bug. It just doesn't happen very open.

January 2, 2011

I read this in the link. Shocking bug.

If anyone is interested, evidently "Darth Mo" has been able to replicate it - found in ACentral Forums - entire post follows;

"It's not user error, or at least it's a combination of user technique and a possible design. It has to do with how the stock messaging app interacts with the Android system notification.

I recreated it this way. Open a text, but only from the notification bar. You will be taken directly to the conversation from that contact. Now, just hit the home button to get back to the home screen. Repeat this four times to let the open conversations build up. We'll call the earliest contact 1, the next 2, etc. for this example. Let's say you converse with these contacts over some time so that messages occur in this chronological order (opened from the notification menu if possible) : 1, you, 2, you, 3, you, 4, you, 1, 3, you, 3.

Now, you've read the message from contact 3, but quickly hit the back button because you need to send a message to contact 4. So you're back at the conversation list and select conversation 4. You compose and send your message and off you go. But, what can actually happen is that your message went to contact 1 because there is a bug that when you use the back button, it will take you to the conversation screen and when you select one, it will take you to the conversation with the last "unreplied" message received before the last conversation you didn't reply to, regardless of the one you actually select from the list. It's easy to miss that it took you to the wrong conversation as the on screen info can take a beat to update and it looks like you've select the right conversation. The kicker is the conversation list does highlight the one you meant to select, but will take you to that other conversation. It's as if it's saying, "Hey, I know you want to go to that one, but you opened this message and jumped out of it without replying. Maybe you didn't see it."

It's pretty easy for people to not have seen this for a few reasons:

1. You open messages directly from the messaging app
2. You close out every conversation using the back button and don't let them build up on top of each other
3. Messages can come in such a sequence that the conditions are never correct
4. It has actually happened, only the last "unreplied" message was from the conversation you actually intended to enter

I was able to create reliably using my Google voice number to send myself text and watched it bounce around conversations seemingly randomly. It was only when I looked at the times of each message with no replies that I saw what it was doing actually had order to it.

About 30 minutes of experimentation to figure it out, but I had to know how this was happening as I could see it leading to an egregious error later. Now to explain it to HTC..."

thanks. it took this guy 30 minutes of experiment to identify the bug. now let's see how long it takes for google to fix. tbh, the good description of the bug may mean it's easy for somebody to go grab the code and fix it themselves. maybe google are waiting for someone to do this to scoop up some open-source everybody can fix it PR :unsure:

January 3, 2011

This has just happened to me and at first thought was quite funny but in hindsight is very serious.

I sent a text message to a group of people instead of 1 person. The text thread to that group must have been still 'open'. Luckily I was just asking my OH to bring back milk :unsure:

It's actually made me very wary of using the phone (any Android phone) for sending texts. It's also making me wary of Android for a phone Operating System. This is a simple thing that phones have been getting right for many years. It takes skill to mess that up.

Cheers.

January 3, 2011

Read this on Engadget last night, people in the comments were saying only the stock sms app has that problem though so i downloaded one from the market to use

January 4, 2011

ah this would explian why my stock sms app would not send to groups ,

i had to d/l GOsms ,

January 4, 2011

I saw this story on Engadget and while it's a dreadful bug you have to weight the criticality on expected frequency x severity. The severity is extreme as you could end up sending something very, very bad to someone you really would not like to see it but, and here's the rub, not a single person on MoDaCo has started a thread to complain about this bug before today. By member count that's some 1 million forum users (lets assume - conservatively - 300,000 Android users) and with all those SMS not one single person has opened a thread about this.

I can see why they made this a medium priority bug. It just doesn't happen very open.

ermm as Peanut_hu highlighted in his post :unsure: ..i did start a thread about this on 15 th Dec. It may not seem important to some people but I'm sure that there are some folks out there who don't really want a text going to their mum instead of their girlfriend., for example :angry: ..and it does make texting more of an effort having to double check each and every time that it's going to the person you want it to, B) xx

Edited January 4, 2011 by trishmac

January 7, 2011

Google has found the cause of this bug and will be patching it in the source shortly.

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/de...tart=1401#c1460

Sign In

Shocking Android bug: SMS being sent to wrong contact

Recommended Posts

Guest Carlos Abel Chavez Slim

Guest PeaNut_HU

Guest isambard

Guest Carlos Abel Chavez Slim

Guest That-Guy

Guest Carlos Abel Chavez Slim

Guest cartierv

Guest majnu

Guest Stuart_f

Guest isambard

Guest has2bok

Guest The Alpha Gamer

Guest cbrpaul

Guest trishmac

Guest Stuart_f

Please sign in to comment

Browse

Activity

Important Information