Phantom Text Message

[Remmy]

I just had a really strange thing happen to me that I've never heard of before.

I was having a conversation with my mum via SMS, then all of a sudden I got a reply off her that made no sense at all in the conversation, and it turns out her phone received a message claiming to be from me, with the correct timestamp, but I'd not sent it.

Upon further investigation, it became apparent that it was a fragment of a message I sent last October (and she received), but merged with the actual message I'd just sent. I've heard of old messages reappearing before, but merging with a new message, that was really weird. Has anybody else experienced this before?

 

[MadShadow]

Never seen that before. Ive seem messages appearing messed up because of the phones time/date settings, but this sounds different.

 

[Remmy]

It actually caused my mum quite a bit of panic due to the content of the message being out of context, but she realised what it was after about half an hour. Really bizarre indeed.

 

[Feronix]

I've had my mum complaining that I didn't text her back once even though I did. After 4 months she randomly got that text.

Maybe an earlier text of yours came through at the exact same moment as the new one did and that's why they merged?

 

[Remmy]

I've had my mum complaining that I didn't text her back once even though I did. After 4 months she randomly got that text.

Maybe an earlier text of yours came through at the exact same moment as the new one did and that's why they merged?

Maybe, but she'd already received the one it merged with

It's not really a problem, I'm just curious about it.

 

[ShaunB-91]

My old Palm Pre used to do it all the time if I'd lost signal. Most texts would arrive when I got it back but occassionally months would go by. Same used to happen to my ex when she had the Palm Pixi, don't know why it happens though.

 

[SPS]

Lucky for you I have the answer to this very annoying bug, IF either you or your mum is on Android?

There's basically a bug in the sms code, here is the bug report.

A way to fix this is to remove these orphaned text messages and there is a useful app that I have been using for sometime which you can get here. This will not stop the bug from happening but if you start experiencing the issue again then run the app and clear out the messages and it should go back to normal.

 

[Remmy]

Lucky for you I have the answer to this very annoying bug, IF either you or your mum is on Android?

There's basically a bug in the sms code, here is the bug report.

A way to fix this is to remove these orphaned text messages and there is a useful app that I have been using for sometime which you can get here. This will not stop the bug from happening but if you start experiencing the issue again then run the app and clear out the messages and it should go back to normal.

Yeah, we're both on Android, cheers SPS, I'll bear it in mind if it persists

 

[dalewakelin]

That is really spooky haha

 

[SPS]

Yeah, we're both on Android, cheers SPS, I'll bear it in mind if it persists

This will persist if the orphaned messages are not deleted now btw, or you can only ever send really small SMSs without them getting mixed up.