Washington,USA: Google announced it is working to fix a bug in its Google Messages app that causes old messages to be sent to unintended contacts, and confirmed it will roll out a patch gradually to devices over the coming weeks.
The complaints came after cases were detected in which the application retrieved texts from previous conversations, some of them personal and sensitive, and replaced them with new messages when sending them, so that they reached people who had no connection to the original conversation.
Several users reported on forums and social media platforms that the problem recurred for them, while some traditional solutions, such as restarting the phone, clearing the cache, or reinstalling the application have failed to resolve the bug.
The problem raised privacy concerns, given the possibility that old messages might contain personal information, verification codes, or sensitive details. Some users reported that a factory reset helped resolve the issue, provided that the old messages were not restored.
The company affirmed that it had forwarded the problem to its engineering team for investigation, indicating that the fix was being rolled out, advising users to review messages before sending them, especially when sharing personal or sensitive information, and to take advantage of the delete for everyone feature if a message is sent by mistake.
