Strange international SMS

[tiktok72]

I just changed my 4gb/province-wide talk/canada-wide text to 6gb/province-wide talk/international text.  After I changed, I reboot my phone.  Everytime when I reboot, I always get 2 or 3 text messages say that I cannot send text outside of Canada.  After I changed my plan, I don't get that message anymore.  But when I check detail of usage, it said I sent 3 text messgaes to Singapole.  I don't know anybody lives in Singapole and I never sent anything oversea.  Is there anyone who can tell me how to fix it?  Thanks

[srlawren]

@tiktok72 is your phone running Android Marshmallow (6.0/6.0.1), or older like Lollipop (5.0/5.0.1/5.1) or KitKat (4.4.0-4.4.5)?  

If it's on Marshmallow, go into your settings (the gear icon when you pull down the notification shade), then tap on Apps, then tap the gear icon again in the Apps listing, and tap Access permissions, and finally SMS.  Any applications with that are enabled here have access to try to send SMS (and read it).  If you can't think of a legitimate reason that some might need it, try disabling this permission for those apps and see if they still function normally.  Obviously whatever texting app you use (Google Messages, Hangouts, TextraSMS, other 3rd party apps) will need permission to send SMS, but few others should.  Experiment to see if you can get these unexpected texts to no longer appear in your history.

[PBForMe]

In my opinion it most certainly is your phone. Android sending random SMS messages to Singapore is certainly not normal. You must have some rouge app sending them.

[srlawren]

@tiktok72 understood.  However, any case I can remember in the past 10 months or so of someone getting those texts from PM had an iPhone that was trying to send out iMessage set up sms messages and failing to do so.  I don't recall hearing of other Android users with this issue.  I suppose it could be another application that is legitimately sending out texts, but it does sound suspicious.

[tiktok72]

I only download from google. Also I read forum time to time and I found that I'm not the only one having problem with text. Some people have problem same as me. So I guess it's not my phone.

[srlawren]

@tiktok72 that does change things a little, then.  Is it possible that your phone has some adware or virus-infected software on it?  Do you only install software from the Google Play Store, or do you sometimes sideload apk's or load software from other sources/sites?  

[tiktok72]

I'm not using Iphone. My phone is koodo g3. And I never had any problem until port over to public mobile. So far I really love the service except this problem.

[srlawren]

@tiktok72 I'm assuming you're using an iOS device (iPhone, iPad).  This was a known issue and as already mentioned, went away now that PM only offeres one type of texting, all or nothing.  It's nothing to be alarmed about.

[srlawren]

Actually @JaK, it was at least in part due to the iMessage situation.  http://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Public-Lab/Allow-iMessaging-confirmation-texts-through....  This was becoming quite a frequent occurence.  I'm sure it's also mostly because it streamlines their offerings and simplifies the plans a bit, but the iMessage situation was considered in the process.

[JaK]

I didn't mention iMessage as I thought the messaging it tries is to California, not Singapore, but yes maybe...

(Also, I doubt that the convenience of a few iOS users was much of a factor in PM's decision to only offer global texting going forward, I suspect it was more about cost of maintaining the extra tier vs price/marketing.)

[PBForMe]

iMessage on iOS sends international SMS messages as part of its operation. One reason why PM changed to global messaging actually, to avoid this error message for iOS users. 

[JaK]

Hi @tiktok72;

It is almost certainly one of your apps that is sending out some kind of a registration message sequence to a related service. To fix it the first step is to figure out which app is doing it.