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How to View "SENT" Box Google Messages

PGB1213

Well-Known Member
Hello All!
I apologize if this is in the wrong place on the forum.

According to my History, my phone sends texts by itself, costing me 20 cents US each time. (Short Code 1CODE94183574 is one example.) I'd like to check the SENT folder on the phone so I can forward it to AT&T for investigation.

The problem is that I can't find the SENT box. Only the IN Box is available.
I tried the Three Line button in the upper left corner. It's not there. Tapping my picture does not bring it up either, even under Settings.
Google help did not show how to find SENT box.

Is it possible to find the SENT box?
Thanks For Helping. I appreciate your advice
Paul
PS: Is there a way to find out why my phone sends texts by itself? Yesterday it sent one and I did not have the phone with me at all that day.
 
SMS apps don't have a "sent" box. They have "conversations", and in each conversation thread you can see both outgoing and incoming messages between you and the recipient. So if you don't have a conversation showing with the recipient the simplest explanation is that these messages are not being stored in the message database, or are being deleted from it. But if you can't see them how do you know what is being sent (or is that short code who it is being sent to)?

(Actually I knew of 1 app that did have the option to show messages in an "inbox" and "sent" style, Pansi SMS, but it was discontinued a very long time ago. And since it was simply taking messages from the same SMS database as any other SMS app and (optionally) sorting them differently I doubt it would show you messages that you can't otherwise see even if it still existed).

As for why your phone sends messages by itself, there will be an app on your phone sending them. The question will be, which one? You need to find a list of all apps that have the ability to send SMS and try to identify the culprit from there. There are apps that can show you all apps with a given permission, e.g. I just ran Addons Detector on my phone, scanned and looked at the "permissions explorer" and found 11 apps with the SEND_SMS permission (most of them actual SMS apps, others were things that I would have guessed might have that ability).

However, ATT will know who your phone is sending these to, because it is using their network to send them (and I'll guarantee they keep the metadata, who you send messages to, for some period of time in case law enforcement turn up with a warrant for that information). I don't know whether the customer service person you speak to will have access (it wouldn't be unreasonable for them not to), but I'm sure someone in the company can find out.
 
This posting on AT&T's tech support page is apparently from you, yes? (Similar and more extensive details with exact same short code)
Some of specifics in the link above are more revealing and indicate AT&T is aware of your problem and willing to help if you contact them via PM. You'll most likely get a lot more relevant help from AT&T directly than a post here on an anonymous Android help forum. Given you also stated you suspect this possible occurs when your phone is in its sleep mode, that does indicate this is an issue with taking place not on your phone but within your online AT&T account. If that's the case, this is something that has to be addressed by you and AT&T. If some jerk has phished your phone number, it's not a phone issue (it isn't happening on your phone) it's your phone number has been phished and it's being used to send spam messages (your phone account is managed and maintained in AT&T servers, your phone is in this instance just how you interact with your online phone service.)
 
Thank You all for taking time to reply.
I'll study each app's permissions to see which one is sending the texts. I still wonder why they don't appear in the Messages box.

I just tried sending a text to someone. No entry is in my Messages box. I also replied to a text and that is in the inbox with the one that was sent to me.

As far as AT&T PM, Svim, (it's my post you quoted), no one answered. I'll try again.
 
Thank You all for taking time to reply.
I'll study each app's permissions to see which one is sending the texts. I still wonder why they don't appear in the Messages box.

I just tried sending a text to someone. No entry is in my Messages box. I also replied to a text and that is in the inbox with the one that was sent to me.

As far as AT&T PM, Svim, (it's my post you quoted), no one answered. I'll try again.
Those spam messages are not being sent out my your phone's text messaging app so you don't need to keep trying to solve the problem by fixating on app. Some moron spoofed your phone number and has been sending out spam text messages using your phone number as the source. This is something you need to work with AT&T do clean up. Again, your phone does not directly manage and maintain your text messages, it's simply just how you interact with them. Your carrier is the link that takes in and sends out all your text messages (or in other words, no cellular service connection, no texting and no any online connectivity).


 
Thanks Again everyone for helping & explaining.

Interestingly, AT&T person said no one can use my number to send texts from not my phone & have it on my history of calls/texts.
It is common for someone to "spoof" a number and send or call showing the spoofed number, but that call or text won't be on my invoice- it will be on the bad guy's.

Mine are the opposite: The texts are on the invoice, but not on the phone logs.
AT&T person said it is impossible for someone to use not my phone to send a text that gets billed to my history. I was told if my number was "compromised" I would not have use of my phone. It would be a SIMSwap scam.
Therefore, it has to be an application on the phone sending the mystery texts, per AT&T- not an outsider. They do not know why the messages are only on the invoice, not on the phone's message app.

If the texting app had a SENT box, like my old phone did, it would be easier to track this short code sender down.
You may be able to tell that I'm losing love for this Messages application. We customers can't do what we want to do with what we bought.
No Sent folder. No way to reply without the attachments. The Worst: No way to send "stand alone" texts that are not conversations if a text from the same person is in the inbox. (Mixes business texts with personal texts to the same person.) AND... No way to do any of this.

AT&T also can't identify the short code numbers that my phone sends texts to by itself.

Such Is Life, I Suppose!
Paul
 
Actually I don't think that a Sent box would help. If these messages were in your SMS database they'd have their own conversation, even if all of the messages in that conversation were outgoing ones (just like if you send messages to a new recipient and they haven't replied you can still see a one-sided conversation with them in your message list). So if they don't appear in your message list at all, reorganising that message list into "received" and "sent" wouldn't make any difference.

But it is very surprising that ATT can't identify who the messages are being sent to. I suspect I know what the answer would be, but can they block the messages? Otherwise it is a case of identify apps that are capable of sending and try to rule them out one-by-one. Do these messages go at a particular time of day? That might make it easier to do.

On the question of keeping business and personal message exchanges separate, I think the fundamental thing to understand is that SMS systems don't include "threading". There's no difference between replying to a message and sending a new message to that number, there is no record that says "this message was in reply to that one" or "this is the start of a new exchange", it's always just "phone X sends a message to phone Y". When your SMS app shows a "conversation" it may look like a series of replies to earlier messages, but all it really is is the set of all messages involving just those 2 numbers, ordered by time. This is why you can't "start a new conversation" for a business discussion, because that's just not how SMS work.

(I'm also not sure the old system really is better for this. Your problem is that the "conversation" mixes business and personal, but then so does your "received" box or "sent" box. It's just that the old way also mixed them with messages from other people as well. So either way you have to read through to find the exchange you want, but in the old way you can't see both halves of the exchange at the same time, and you may have other people's messages popping up inbetween the ones you are looking for. I know why you want it, but from a practical point of view I think it's easier to find and review a particular discussion in the "conversation" paradigm than the "sent/received" one).

But can you separate them? If the person uses different phones for business and personal then it's easy: rather than having both phone numbers in a single contact, create a separate contact, e.g. "John Doe (business name)" for their business number, and then the messages will end up in different conversations. If they use the same number for both then I don't see how any app can help, because for the reason described above the idea of starting a new conversation with the same number is just not how SMS works. So if you really want to keep business and personal separate, and they are the same number, all I can think of is using different messaging systems, e.g. WhatsApp for business and SMS/MMS for personal: those are different types of message, so Google Messages cannot receive WhatsApp (or Signal, Telegraph, WeChat or whatever), and as long as you don't let the other app send/receive SMS as well (because some of them can) they will be in entirely separate apps.

The one I'm not sure about is this "no way to reply without the attachment", because there I'm not sure what you are describing. For Google Messages "attachments" presumably means MMS (or maybe RCS "Chat") messages, as opposed to SMS. I've not used MMS for almost a decade: it's much more limited in what it can send than any other messaging system, but in the UK still remains expensive (while SMS have been effectively free for a long time), and so I know nobody who still uses it. But historically I have replied to MMS containing media without my reply including a copy of said media, so have to assume that you mean something else when you say this. Of course I've never used RCS (I know nobody who has), and don't use Google's Messages app, but for MMS I'd expect Messages to work the same as any other app. Hence I think you must be talking about something different from my experience.
 
Thank You Hadron for a very good explanation of how texting works. It is certainly complicated. I get confused between MMS, RCS, SMS and now my phone wants to send something called "RCS Chat". From what I can find out, RCS is quite an improvement in security over SMS.


In the last paragraph, you mentioned not being sure about no way to send without attachment. I apologize, but I explained very poorly. Here is another try:
A person named "Louis" sent me a text message with a photo. ("Attachment")
It is still in my inbox 50 days later.
I wanted to send Louis a text. My new text got sent to Louis with the one he had sent to me 50 days ago, including the photo.

It seems to send a new text with to someone who already has a text in my inbox- with no old texts attached- all texts from that person should be deleted from the inbox before composing & sending the new text. Best I've got.
 
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