Google Messages Bug Sends Old Texts to Random People

A bug in Google Messages is causing some people's texts from months or years ago to be sent to random people instead.

Multiple users on Reddit have reported seeing their old messages from other chats being sent when they send any type of text, even pictures.

Clearing the cache or uninstalling updates only caused all message threads to be combined with old messages, making chats a jumbled mess.

Old messages can contain very sensitive information that you don't want in the hands of random people on your contacts list. One user reported having their confirmation of a vet appointment replaced with a text from a friend offering for all her aunties to rough someone up on the playground. Another reported that it sent a message about sex to their mother.

It doesn't seem to matter whether the messages are SMS or RCS either, all could potentially be sent off to unwanted recipients.

The problems aren't limited to just Pixel phones, either. Users on both Pixels and Samsung phones mention being affected, but many phone manufacturers use Google Messages as the default messenger app.

Some workarounds, such as factory reseting and restoring your messages, seem to have worked for some people. Some fixes only make the problem worse, however.

Google has acknowledged the problem and a fix is being worked on, they confirmed to Android Authority:

We’re currently rolling out a fix that will reach everyone over the coming weeks. Please ensure you stay up to date with the most recent version of Google Messages.

They say Google has pointed to the issue being transferring messages to a new device as the trigger for the bug. Even when the fix is released, it may take weeks for it to reach everyone.

The privacy implications of this bug are particularly concerning since Google's RCS implementation is end-to-end encrypted between Google Messages users, and even iOS users if their carrier supports RCS. People likely have highly sensitive data in those encrypted messages that they wouldn't want anyone other than the intended recipient to see.

For now, the advice is to install the latest version of Google Messages from the Play Store and keep your device up-to-date. Google's fix should arrive shortly. In the meantime, you could try out an alternate E2EE messenger like Signal.