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How would one know if their phone was or is afflicted by the recent bug (sending sms to the wrong people)?

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Title is unclear: HTC's implementation of Android SMS handling in the past has been buggy in the extreme - so maybe pick a better title? – PP. Jan 4 '11 at 13:52
It's a well known and specific bug that affects all phones running the android os. Anyone that regularly follows android news should be familiar. If you search google for "android sms bug" pretty much every result is about it. When I'm at a computer and not posting from my phone I'll add more info. – Matt Jan 4 '11 at 19:08
Apparently Google now believe that there were two separate SMS bugs that they've managed to reproduce, and now have fixes for. More here androidguys.com/2011/01/06/google-working-fixes-sms-bugs no word yet on when or how the fixes will be distributed. – GAThrawn Jan 6 '11 at 23:50

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up vote 7 down vote accepted

From this post, it seems that only very specific conditions seem to trigger this bug. Also, AFAIK, this only seems to affect the default Messaging app, using a replacement like Handcent seems to be the way to go. More info on the bug here.

Specifically, there is something about certain email-to-SMS messages that corrupts Android's SQLite database, causing unpredictable results thereafter. The most commonly cited offender is alerts sent by Bank of America, though SMS alerts sent by LinkedIn and T-Mobile are also cited. It's possible that any SMS where the sender is an email address will do the trick, or it's possible there's something else these specific senders' messages have in common.

To be clear: if you've never received one of these corrupting messages, you will never be able to reproduce the bug. That's why it's only affecting a small group of Android users.

If you have fallen prey to the issue, you should be able to fix it by performing a hard reset (wiping all data) and then blocking the offending sender(s) from sending you texts in the future.

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The bug report you linked to mentions that the mis-directed SMSs are sent to the first contact in your contact list, so is it worth adding a new contact to the beginning of your list ('Mr Aaaa Aaaa') with your own number? – Matt H Jan 4 '11 at 14:25
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I've had a contact like that for years, ever since my friend 'Adam' kept complaining that my phone kept ringing him from my pocket when I forgot to lock it. – GAThrawn Jan 4 '11 at 14:32
Might be a good idea. – Sparx Jan 4 '11 at 14:39

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