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Today I received two suspicious SMS from two different sender - both from the same provider. The messages only contained the text "request failed". The numbers do not look like some special expensive numbers.

Can anyone guess what happened?

Is there a way to find out if there is an app which is allowed to send SMS on my phone?

Update: now that I've seen that there is no suspicious app with permissions to send SMS, I try to reconsile the SMS in my SMS history with the ones from my bill. But I noticed that it's hard to get a chronological list of SMS from the build in app - any idea how I can get a chronological list of sent SMS and not conversations?

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  • "The same thing happened to me today, though only one text message. From your posting time I even assume it happened at the same time. Maybe we could exchange what Apps we have on our phones to determine which one could be responsible? My most recently installed one is CPU Tuner. Such an event never happened before to me." --from another user
    – Peanut
    Jun 18 '13 at 0:36
  • both messages had a prefix of +491525 . got the first one at 15:48 MEST. My recently installed apps where games which I trust. I guess the problem could be in an older app - only the server failed just now ?!
    – rdmueller
    Jun 18 '13 at 7:22
  • @Ralf: Re: your update. If you have a new question, please make a new question post.
    – ale
    Jun 18 '13 at 12:45
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I got the same problem. Received two messages with "Request Failed" and am curious where they are from. I noticed that they always seem to arrive shortly after Google Calendar SMS. So maybe that's somehow connected.

As you might be able to see - the SMS is sent to you and not from you. In previous days I got the Google SMS sometimes twice. So maybe Google tried to fix the problem - what's left is a false request from Google using your number with their calender application, instead of replying to Google that the request is from it gets send to the alias number - being your number.

I guess there's nothing to worry about. But anyway I'll try to remove my number from Google - I saw that somewhere you can just remove all SMS notifications - that might help.

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  • Bingo - got both of them some minutes (aprox 40) after google notifications...
    – rdmueller
    Jun 18 '13 at 11:24
  • I tried replying with "STOP" at least in America that would work. But Google says that it won't work in Germany - but who knows...it's worth a try. ;-)
    – Malte
    Jun 18 '13 at 11:39
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The last part of your question is easily answered, as there are a lot of permission scanners available on the Playstore. For added benefit, I will just mention one: AppBrain Ad Detector also scans for contained ad modules and more:

AppBrain Ad Detector AppBrain Ad Detector
AppBrain Ad Detector (source: Google Play; click images for larger variants)

As you can see in the screenshots, such an app would turn up in "Has access to your messages", and for sure in "May cost you money".

There are a lot more permission-scanners out there, some even explaining what those permissions stand for and what they mean. Take a look e.g. at RL Permissions, Guardian Droid, or aSpotCat (app by permission) -- and check their related apps for more candidates.

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  • Thanx - that helped me to find that there is no application which has permission to send SMS...
    – rdmueller
    Jun 18 '13 at 7:19
  • Glad I was able to help! As it solved your issue, you might consider accepting the answer (so others can see this is a solution) :)
    – Izzy ♦
    Jun 18 '13 at 8:35
  • It only partly solves my problem - still do not know what happened... but I will remember to accept it as answer when there will be no better one :-)
    – rdmueller
    Jun 18 '13 at 8:42
  • Re-Reading the issue, I fully confirm it solves only one half (but an important half, as you no longer need to fear some malware is clearing your account). The number the SMS was sent to is no "premium" number either (rather a common German cell phone number). Could it be you "left the device on the table", and somebody used his/her chance to send some SMS?
    – Izzy ♦
    Jun 18 '13 at 8:56
  • The SMS would be visible in the history. And "left the device on the table" is very unlikely :-)
    – rdmueller
    Jun 18 '13 at 9:03

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