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Samsung Phones Are Spontaneously Texting Users' Photos To Random Contacts Without Their Permission (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the what-in-the-world dept.

Some Samsung smartphones are randomly sending pictures from the device to a user's contacts without explicit permission, according to users and media outlets. From a report: Users are complaining about the issue on Reddit and the company's official forums. One user says his phone sent all his photos to his girlfriend. The messages are being sent through Samsung's default texting app Samsung Messages, and the photos are being sent as SMS messages. According to reports, the Messages app does not even show users that files have been sent; many just find out after they get a response from the recipient of the random photos sent to them. Samsung told the news outlet it was aware of the issue and was looking into it.

3 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Move fast, break things, shoot each other in th by rickb928 · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's not the release schedule that's Agile, its' the development process...

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    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  2. Re:No, they are not sent as SMS messages by rickb928 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's called MMS...

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    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  3. 1% more likely in Rust (troll?) by raymorris · · Score: 5, Informative

    I imagine this is probably a troll, but just in case:

    The language chosen would have very, very little effect on this. This is a problem with the overall design of the app.

    Rust, like Python, Java, Perl, PHP, VBScript, JavaScript, and most other languages, doesn't lend itself to one very specific type of bug called a buffer overflow. That specific issue is mostly just seen in C. Rust is like most languages in that buffer overflow isn't the bug you have to worry about in Rust (or in Perl, PHP, Python, Java, etc.)

    What's different about Rust is a very clever marketing thing they did. They took the fact that most languages, including Rust, don't have buffer overflows and hyped it to Trumpian proportions. In marketing material that would make PT Barnum blush, they exclaimed "Rust is secure because it doesn't have buffer overflows! Write all your software in Rust and you'll never have another bug!" Understand this is analogous to saying "spiders are venomous, don't use spiders. Tigers have no venom! If you use tigers, you never have to worry about venom at all. Buy some tigers from us today so you can be safe!"

    The problem then is that newbies who don't understand much about programming *think* they're safe because they're using tigers. No need to be careful with tigers because they aren't venomous. Er, I mean no need to be careful when you're using Rust because it doesn't have buffer overflows. That makes it slightly more dangerous, since a lot of people aren't being as careful as they should, thinking Rust is somehow magic.

    I maintain a database of every CVE (security bug) ever reported. Well under 1% of them are buffer overflows, so it's a tiny percentage of problems that Rust protects against.