Google said on September 2 that a fix was rolling out for a Google Messages bug that sends old texts to the wrong people. Five days later, people are still reporting it. Droid Life reported on September 7 that it had found “at least two more within the past 24 hours that are still experiencing this insane bug.” That gap between the statement and the reality on people’s phones is the story here.
What the Google Messages bug actually does
The behaviour is narrow but ugly. When you send a new message to someone, the app can revive an old message you once sent to a completely different contact and attach it to the outgoing text. The recipient gets both. You get no warning that it happened.
Droid Life describes one user who messaged an asphalt company and had a vulgar message sent to their wife roughly a year earlier ride along with it. Some people have tested it by texting themselves and watched old messages appear in the thread on their own.
Two details make this worse than a normal messaging glitch. It happens over both RCS and SMS, according to Droid Life, so switching protocols is not a workaround. And it pulls from message history, which means the content that leaks is arbitrary. It could be a grocery list. It could be anything you have ever typed into the app.
Google’s explanation, and the timeline
Google has confirmed it knows about the issue. In a statement reported by 9to5Google, Google said:
We’re currently rolling out a fix that will reach everyone over the coming weeks. Please ensure you stay up to date with the most recent version of Google Messages.
9to5Google notes that statement was made on September 2, “and reports continue to pop up now, the better part of a week later.” Droid Life reports that Google believes the bug originates in the transfer process when you set up a new phone.
That cause matters, because it points at the exact moment a lot of people are most exposed. Restoring your messages onto a new handset is a standard step, not an edge case. It is also the point at which a user has the least ability to notice anything went wrong.
“Over the coming weeks” is a reasonable rollout schedule for a feature. It is a strange one for a fault that can send a private message to a stranger. A staged rollout protects Google from shipping a bad patch to every device at once. It also means a known privacy failure stays live on some phones for weeks while the fix works its way out, and nobody affected can tell which group they are in.
What you can do right now
The only lever on your side is the app version. Open the Play Store, search for Google Messages and check for a pending update rather than waiting for one to install on its own. Droid Life reports receiving Play beta channel builds dated September 3 (messages.android_20260903_04_RC00) and September 4 (messages.android_20260904_04_RC00), and suggests the fix may arrive sooner on the beta track than the stable one.
Joining a beta channel to escape a bug is a trade, not a solution, and it is worth naming as such. You take on pre-release builds in exchange for getting patches earlier. If your phone is a daily driver you rely on, waiting on stable is the safer call. Either way, there is no user-facing setting that switches this behaviour off. Until the patch reaches you, the app decides what goes out.
Sources: Droid Life, 9to5Google
