Samsung investigating reports of involuntary photo message sending

Samsung has said it is investigating after some users claimed their phones started sending photos to contacts without their permission.

According to user posts on Reddit and the Korean firm's own customer forums, the messages are being sent from the default Samsung Messages app but it does not show the files have been sent.

However, the technology giant said it has not had any cases reported to it directly relating to the incident and is yet to find any issues possibly linked to it.

"Samsung has reviewed this matter thoroughly these past few days; however, there were no hardware or software issues found to be relevant to this particular case," a Samsung spokeswoman said.

"While there have been no known similar customer reports globally, we will continue to investigate this issue further.

"We encourage any customers who may have questions or concerns to contact their local customer service centre at 0330 726 7864."

In one account, Reddit user Rubsumlotion claimed his Samsung Galaxy S9+ sent his "entire photo gallery over text" to his girlfriend.

Other users have since reported similar issues, but no cause has been found.

However, some have reported receiving an update to their messaging app that enables Rich Communication Services (RCS), which is currently being slowly introduced around the world.

This is the technology designed to replace SMS as the modern standard for text messaging and is programmed to make sending multimedia content easier.

In the meantime, it has been suggested users switch to a different messaging app or disable access to a phone's storage in the Samsung Messages app in order to prevent any files being sent.