How to stop your Samsung Galaxy S9 phone from sending your pics to your contacts?
Samsung Galaxy S9 messages app recently had a bug where it sends put photos to random contacts without your permission. This raised a mssive privacy issue and a case of embarrassment for victims of this bug. Read the comments for this bug on this Reddit thread.
According to Samsung who was investigating the issue at the time of writing and has asked affected users to call the company’s support line at 1-800-SAMSUNG with any complaints.
Until this issue is resolved you can try the following methods to stop your Samsung Galaxy S9 phone from sending your pics to your contacts without your permission
Turn off the Messages access to your pics
As Samsung Messages is presumably accessing your photos directly through the app, you can turn off its access right at the source. Open the Settings app on your phone and select Apps > Messages (the Samsung one) > Permissions to turn off Messages’ access to your phone’s storage. That should prevent it from being able to see your photos when it tries to access them.
Opt for another messaging app
Though you can’t delete Samsung Messages from your phone, but you don’t have to use it to send texts on your Galaxy phone. There are many messaging apps at Play Store, including Facebook Messenger, Pulse SMS, WhatsApp Messenger and various others. Even truecaller app is a good messaging app. You can use Android messages app also from play store and use it for messaging.
To switch to a different default messaging app, download the new app first, then head over to Settings. Select Apps, tap the menu button in the upper right corner, choose Default apps, and then Messaging apps. You’ll see a list of any messaging apps installed on your phone, and you can select any of them as the new default.
Remove photos from the Gallery app
Though it is yet now known as how Samsung Messages is accessing photos, but experts believe that Google Photos isn’t the issue. Once you back up your phone’s photos to Google’s cloud servers, you can safely delete them from your Gallery app. Open the app, long-press on a photo until a check mark appears, tap the All button at the top left corner, and select Delete. While you’re at it, you can shut off Samsung Cloud in Settings too accessible via the menu in the right corner. That way even if Samsung Messages tries to send your pics, there won’t be any photos for it to send.
Try these three methods and see how it works.