Here’s the deal: if you own a Samsung phone, including the Galaxy S9 or the Note 8, your private pics may be at risk. The phone might be sending photos to your contacts without your knowledge, which doesn’t seem like a big deal until you realize you might not want certain images to be sent to certain contacts. In other words, your phone might send nudes to your boss or mom on its own, which would obviously be a pretty big problem.
The cause of the issue isn’t known at this point, and Samsung is investigating the matter. While you wait, there are fixes in place if you’re one of the victims.
Posts on Reddit and Samsung’s forums, first reported by Gizmodo, explain that it all happens without the owner’s knowledge. The photos are sent randomly to contacts and there’s no trace in the Samsung Messages app to prove that it happened. The only proof is the response you might receive from a recipient surprised to see pictures from you without any explanation.
One Reddit user discovered that Samsung Messages sent out his entire photo gallery to a contact in the middle of the night. Luckily it was the user’s partner, but the behavior is still unacceptable.
Samsung says it’s looking into the matter:
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.
A theory as to why this happens says that Samsung Messages isn’t working correctly with the RCS profile updates that rolled out recently. T-Mobile says it’s not a T-Mobile issue, pointing to Samsung.
While you wait for Samsung to fix the problem, you can try two temporary fixes yourself. First of all, you can ditch Samsung Messages and use a different messaging app. Secondly, you should revoke Samsung Messages’ permissions to access your phone’s storage. In either case, just to be safe, you might want to move any compromising photos off your Galaxy phone for the time being.
