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The Impossible Text

silasp

silasp

Newbie
I received a text from my wife yesterday that read "Great. Thanks." As I hadn't recently done anything worthy of her gratitude I replied "For what?". She then called me from the other room and asked what I meant and I told her I was replying to her text. She said she had not just sent me a text. I said she probably intended it for someone else but she insisted she had not just sent anyone a text. I went and took a look at her phone and, sure enough, there was no text to me, only my "For what?" reply. I scrolled through all her recent texts and there was no "Great. Thanks".

I tried to imagine a scenario where someone could receive a text that doesn't appear on the senders phone or how someone could send a text but have it appear to be from someone else, but I failed. I hate having something stump me like this. Does anyone have any idea how this could happen?
 
Does she have Google Assistant, the automated and sometimes annoying voice activated service, enabled on her phone? Perhaps she just said something GA misinterpreted as a text message.
 
svim said:
Does she have Google Assistant, the automated and sometimes annoying voice activated service, enabled on her phone? Perhaps she just said something GA misinterpreted as a text message.
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We thought about that, but wouldn't the Assistant have activated her messaging app and sent the text, thereby leaving a record of the sent message?
 
silasp said:
We thought about that, but wouldn't the Assistant have activated her messaging app and sent the text, thereby leaving a record of the sent message?
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Yeah, I would think that would be case, her text messaging app would have it registered as a sent message. But at the same time, there are a lot of variables involved that 'might' be pertinent (i.e. which text messaging app she uses, which text messaging service, which version of Android is her phone running, etc.), and there's a good chance that there are a lot of oddities that tie into Google Assistant's background services. (... with a good chance it's completely unrelated to this mystery. It was just idle supposition on a possibility.)
If this was some kind of spoofed message involving her phone number sending you spam, the content of the message doesn't seem to fall into that category. Are you both using the same carrier or different carrier services?
Did you also check her email app for any a SMS being sent to your number?
 
Dannydet said:
Someone spoofed her number and sent it to you. Happens all the time
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Okay. But as svim mentioned- what would be the point? What a peculiar message to send. I guess I'll consider the mystery solved but with a somewhat unsatisfying solution.

Thanks for the replies.
 
silasp said:
I received a text from my wife yesterday that read "Great. Thanks." As I hadn't recently done anything worthy of her gratitude I replied "For what?". She then called me from the other room and asked what I meant and I told her I was replying to her text. She said she had not just sent me a text. I said she probably intended it for someone else but she insisted she had not just sent anyone a text. I went and took a look at her phone and, sure enough, there was no text to me, only my "For what?" reply. I scrolled through all her recent texts and there was no "Great. Thanks".

I tried to imagine a scenario where someone could receive a text that doesn't appear on the senders phone or how someone could send a text but have it appear to be from someone else, but I failed. I hate having something stump me like this. Does anyone have any idea how this could happen?
Click to expand...

Export your texts to file and check out the metadata.
 
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