Nicolas, possible solutions very much depend on how far you will go (and partly, how far your carrier goes along). There is no 100% cure, but a few items you might consider:
- Say Goodbye to Hangouts. If you can live without that app, make another one the default SMS/MMS handler and don't use Hangouts – at least not until Google fixed that "autoplay". I'd expect an update there soon where you can at least disable that autoplay feature.
- Disable your MMS APN. This of course you can do only if you can live without MMS altogether (I can: didn't get a single MMS in the 20 years I'm using mobiles – and the only one sent to me never reached my device because of carrier policies: to receive, I had first to send an MMS, which I never did). And apart from that, this might or might not work: I know of providers ignoring APNs, at least for the normal Internet connection (which then works even if you have no APN at all configured – they somehow fix that at their end).
- Ask your carrier if MMS can at least temporarily "switched off" somehow from their end. They should have those capability: If you e.g. send an MMS to someone having a non-MMS-capable dumbphone, they'd send that person a link to where to read the MMS with a browser. You then could use a web browser at your PC to read the MMS – where Android-specific exploits had a hard time dealing with OSX, Windows, or Linux :)
Afraid only few of us can hope for OS updates to really fix that. Though, when under warranty, one might try pressing them: depending on how one uses the device, this bug might very much "render it unuseable" for daily use without the user's fault – which in my eyes is a case for warranty: fix it or have it back. Enough people with this argument, and some with good lawyers … might make them think twice ;)
