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Help Phone sent eerie text by itself

K

K0j0

Lurker
Hello. I'm new to the forums. Something happened to me that was so strange that I want to ask around and see if anyone else has expreienced something similar.

I use a Galaxy S3 and I'm on Sprint. I was out earlier today and was texting with my girlfriend. I was using the default messaging app that comes with the phone. I sent her a text that failed to go out. In the messaging app the text was darkened and there was a red exclamation point next to it.

No big deal, right? I tap on the exclamation point to resend the text. The text is no longer darkened and the red exclamation point becomes a spinning wait icon. Then the text repeats itself twice. Again, no big deal, I've seen this before. I figure it has something to do with the phone trying to resend the message. I press and hold one of the repeated messages to delete it then something strange happens.

I delete one the duplicate, but then another text is sent from my phone. This text is not a duplicate of what I just sent to my girlfriend. The content of the text is something that I would never say to her, because it's something that she sometimes says to me, (kind of an inside joke / pet name). It was very odd, but I assumed that she had sent me the text and my phone had somehow rendered it incorrectly as though I had sent it.

This wasn't the case. She responds to me confused by the message and I told her that I wasn't sure what happened. I thought about it for awhile and I'm still not really sure. After some Googling it seems that I either have a virus or have been hacked. Since the content of the text was so specific and made sense within the context of our conversation I'm very worried that I've been hacked. Has anyone ever experienced or heard of something similar? Any suggestions? Please let me know. Thanks.
 
Hi K0j0, and welcome to AF!:)
I have moved this thread into the S3 forum so that others with the same phone can help to address if this is perhaps a known problem.
This is certainly curious.
I have had phones that made random calls and texts but never a personalized one like that. I would recommend a factory reset and hopefully that will put things right.
 
Ive never heard of that. Are you sure it wasnt an old text from her that you somehow sent back? Viruses are really uncommon on android and most hackers wouldnt waste time playing games if they did have control of your phone. Theyd be more likely to send texts to a premium number that they own :thumbup:
 
Weird I have the same phone running CM10.1 and have NEVER had anything like this happen... I'll look into it and get back to you.
 
funkylogik said:
Ive never heard of that. Are you sure it wasnt an old text from her that you somehow sent back? Viruses are really uncommon on android and most hackers wouldnt waste time playing games if they did have control of your phone. Theyd be more likely to send texts to a premium number that they own :thumbup:
Click to expand...
Yeah, funkylogik turns out that's what happened. After getting some anti virus stuff, Googling and freaking out more she and I realized that the eerie text was something she had sent me earlier in the day. I had not received it earlier though. I guess when my phone tried to resend the failed text it also retrieved her undelivered text and had me send it as well for some reason.

As a programmer I can totally see this happening as a really weird edge case bug. Such a shitty bug though! The thing is, in the context of the conversation we were having it was sort of patronizing for me to have sent that and there was really no way to prove that I didn't. Anyways, I'm more inclined to believe that it was an edge case bug than some spying, dick hacker. Wouldn't really make sense to spy on me anyway, I don't do much.

Thanks for the replies, guys! I think I'm going to learn a little more about how SMS works so I can figure out who to complain to / file a bug report with. I think the carriers handle SMS so this is either T-Mobile or Sprint's fault. Or both.
 
I actually made a thread about it in the droid 4 forum -_- sorry. But my phone was getting progressively worse over the past few months. Battery usage was crazy, apps would be installed and uninstalled quickly, contacts and photos would be deleted and changed my phone would send calls and texts by itself. I also began to get spam texts and texts from random number, but theyd always disappear shortly after. I didnt have a credit card logged into my phone so I guess thats a good thing, for the time being i'm not using it since it continuously reset itself to factory defaults again and again :/ I'm thinking I hooked up to a bogus wifi hotspot and somebody got in, it happened to a friend of mine but she just lost her credit card info and not her phone -_- Its not the sim card since it worked when i installed in it an old phone though.
 
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