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AT&T Phones Adding Unknown Recipients from Different Area Code to Group Texts
- pavel_lishin 9y agoIt's marked as "solved", but the solution is just an AT&T rep apologizing and asking users to report more information if they experience the problem again.
- valuearb 9y agoIt's solved because AT&T knows what's causing it. Not that they'll tell you.
- jnbiche 9y agoWhat does this mean? Do you know what's causing it?
- Justin_K 9y ago"That's like, your opinion man." The dude.
- rgbrenner 9y agowhere did you get that idea? the "solution" says: We are investigating this issue and are looking for more information to get down to the bottom of this. If you do experience this issue, please send us a private message. ... We thank you for your help and patience as we work on this issue. So they dont know what's causing it, and they have not solved it.
- dawnerd 9y agoA classic case of moving something that's bad PR to private communications. Happens on twitter all the time.
- UnfalseDesign 9y agoThough many companies do move bad PR to private communications, in this case a private message makes sense since AT&T is asking for personal information such as the customer's phone number.
- sitkack 9y agoWhat is now the classic playbook. Smiley Face, say it has been largely mitigated. Ask for PMs for specific cases. Making a widespread issue seem isolated as you implement a fix that affects 10M people.
- revmoo 9y agoFascinating concept of "solved" that you, and AT&T, appear to have.
- CaptSpify 9y agoWelcome to almost every support answer from every big company. It's getting harder and harder to get support for obviously broken systems if you can't publicize the problem.
- cgb223 9y agoAnyone with telecom knowledge have any idea what this could be?
- ActsJuvenile 9y agoIt was a minor bug in the NSA text collection program. Don't worry citizen, go back to your scheduled life.
- berbec 9y agoThis
- nonamechicken 9y agoYour comment reminded me of a similar scenario with my Windows 10 PC. One day, I saw lot of computers (100+) listed in my network when I went to network places through Explorer. My laptop was the only one in my network. I don't know if it was a bug in Windows or if my PC was actually part of some unknown n/w. I suspected dd-wrt in my router and immediately went back to manufacturer firmware and formatted my laptop. Never saw that after.
- josh2600 9y agoIf it's a group message I believe it's carried over the mms channels so it could be a bug in the mmsc. There are so many layers involved that it's hard to know but I'd guess it's a caching bug somewhere along the line. Source: telecom PM for years.
- richardwhiuk 9y agoThere's two ways to do multi party messaging - Broadcast SMS, or Group MMS. The later is more likely here, given it's a regular group message. It's most likely to be a bug on one of the MMSCs, but could be a problem elsewhere if the message is getting corrupted in flight. Alternatively, it could be routing issue in a certain set of numbers.
- rizwank 9y ago
- Aloha 9y agoI was more amused that poster only has one kevin in his contact list.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 9y agoI'd bet a large majority of people have between zero and one. Name collisions aren't rare, but collisions on any particular name, even names much more common than Kevin, are.
- Aloha 9y agoI have six.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoSo?
- beobab 9y agoSo that was why they were amused. One of the elements of humour is unexpectedness. :)
- kayfox 9y agoYou also have 100s of people in your contact list.
- Aloha 9y agoYeah, about 500 or so.
- otakucode 9y agoSounds like a good way to make new friends! Statistically, you'll probably meet someone interesting...
- bhaile 9y agoHappened to a co worker. Got added to a group text and has no idea how. The people in the group text were surprised as well.
- ashark 9y agoYeah, this solves (sort of) the mystery of someone none of us knew being added to a large group text about a year ago.
- 5ilv3r 9y agoI've seen it and I'm pretty sure this is an android bug. I noticed that in lollipop, contacts with the same number but different area codes are not treated differently in the messaging UI. Tmobile with an old cyanogen build.
- dwringer 9y agoThis looks like it was posted in an Apple subforum, and anecdotally this came to my attention because of someone I know with an iPhone, so I think that might be a separate issue (or possibly a different incarnation of the same issue). Also, in this instance, I think the entire phone number is unrecognized, not just the area code.
- 5ilv3r 9y agoHard to tell where the problems are between the carrier and handset are nowadays. Thanks for pointing that out. I missed it.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoBut these people all seem to be strangers.
- godgod 9y agoHuge privacy concern no?
- godgod 9y agoI'm pregnant with AIDS and am addicted to speed...and great, now Kevin knows too!
- knodi 9y agoGroupText is via MMS, so these group text are routed via ATT MMSC. Which is shit.
- apple4ever 9y agoHappened to myself and a group of friends too! Some random person replied “who is this?”
- aaronsnoswell 9y agoPossibly related anecdote; A few years ago I purchased a new sim card for my phone with a large Australian mobile carrier. After popping the new card in, I discovered ~10 real human being contacts on the sim that I had never heard of before (not tech support or business, carrier numbers etc.). They had names and everything. Contacted a few of them and couldn't figure out what the common factor was. I lodged a complaint with the carrier and got a personalized letter and call back from their state manager. No explanation why though. Still baffles me today. Do sim cards get re-used?
- CodeWriter23 9y agoI know in iMessage, you can tap the (i) info icon then + Add Contact. And so can a friend add someone unknown to you. But Occam’s Razor be damned...
- tuxxy 9y agoThis happened to my brother and girlfriend at the same time. Both iPhone users. We thought it was someone fucking with us, so I got the CNAM of the phone number and creeped the guy out by telling him his name (lol) and then we both came to the conclusion that something fishy is going on.