A potential privacy disaster has hit Google Messages in recent weeks and the rollout of a fix probably isn’t happening fast enough. Over the weekend, several Google Messages users continued to notice that their phones were sending really old messages to recipients alongside new messages.
The issue here has been reported numerous times over the past few weeks on reddit and only continued into the weekend. We found at least two more within the past 24 hours that are still experiencing this insane bug.
Google Messages old texts bug
For reasons that still aren’t clear, when a user goes to send a new message to someone, Google Messages is at times also including a very old message that was sent to a different recipient alongside the new message.
As an example, one user showed proof that they had sent a message to an asphalt company and it included a vulgar message they had sent their wife at least a year ago. Again, a random old message to a different recipient included with their message to a completely different person.
One of the biggest threads on this bug had someone in a full breakdown, which is a completely valid response. Not knowing what your phone might send to someone as you text them is a frightening thought and a complete privacy nightmare.
For those curious, this is happening to people over both RCS and SMS.
Google Messages bug fix is incoming
Thankfully, Google has already confirmed that they are aware of the bug and have a fix on the way. They actually believe the bug is coming from the transfer process of setting up a new phone.
Knowing Google’s absurdly slow rollout pace at times, there’s really no telling when this fix will hit your device. What you can do is continue to check for Google Messages updates on Google Play.
I can confirm that I received updates on the Google Play beta channel with September 3 (messages.android_20260903_04_RC00) and September 4 (messages.android_20260904_04_RC00) build numbers. There’s a good chance the fix could hit your device faster if in the beta program. Sign-up here.
Let us know if you’ve experienced this bug and if an update has already arrived to fix it. Update your app at the link below.
Google Play Link: Google Messages
