Replying to a reply of a multiple recipients SMS can cause huge embarrassment

asked 2014-02-25 15:22:30 +0200

François

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http://francois.kubler.or...

updated 2014-04-17 13:20:56 +0200

chemist
41469 ●392 ●542 ●615

moderator

http://talk.maemo.org/

Sending SMS to multiple recipients can cause some really embarrassing situation. Here's what I've noticed :

The other day, I sent a SMS to multiple recipients, announcing some great news. As a result, I got an individual thread for each recipient in my Messages app (which is fine) + another one (which has a special icon) for all recipients (dunno what's the point with this, but, well, 'kay).

I received several replies from different buddies and answered them without problem. The messages were added to the corresponding individual threads.

BUT when I replied to one of them (I think he was the first on the list), the app suddenly decided to send my reply to ALL recipients ! This reply was also added to individual threads. I was just answering HIS message :(

Fortunetly my reply didn't contain something really private. I just had to apologize to every recipients for the mistake. But this can cause very embarrassing situations. This can be a disaster for privacy.

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The simple to solution to this would be that for when a message went to several recipients it would become a 'broadcast only' sort of thread and never show any replies, then if further typing went in against earlier messages it would be clear this would be sent to the same recipients, but as "broadcast only" again.

markcoley ( 2014-02-25 19:14:15 +0200 )edit

I don't understand how you can make this mistake . The mult user sms has a different small icon so you know it will reply to all.

bockersjv ( 2014-02-25 20:44:19 +0200 )edit

@François: To me this looks exactly like the issue you link to. What's the difference?

Tanghus ( 2014-02-25 21:42:36 +0200 )edit

1

In this question it is explained clearly.

Sending to a group, a person of that group reply's only to you, you will reply to that person, but instead everybody of that group receives your answer.

Thats causing problems!

BonoNL ( 2014-02-25 22:53:26 +0200 )edit

@BonoNL: Then edit the question or ask the reporter to do it. This is just wasting votes.

Tanghus ( 2014-02-25 23:29:19 +0200 )edit

12

answered 2014-09-05 09:33:16 +0200

stezz

12361 ●75 ●78 ●92

moderator

http://stezz.blogspot.com...

updated 2014-09-13 17:08:48 +0200

Hi, can you please specify how often has this happened and if there is any specific steps to reproduce?

We have been trying to reproduce it without success since February. In the original report it's written

when I replied to one of them (I think he was the first on the list)

Was it the first of the list? Was it the group message itself?

[EDIT] All right after a bit of testings,the real problem is that the SMS you get as a reply from the first recipient in the list gets added to te multithreaded conversation instead than to the single threaded one. This, though visible, ends up in inducing the user replying to the multi threaded conversation rather than the single threaded one.

Will hopefully tackle in October-ish release, too late for this one. [/EDIT]

Thanks

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2

@stezz: Thanks for your time and interest in this issue :)

I don't send SMS to more than one contact at the same time anymore. But this is what I remember :

Send a SMS to : Chris, John and Bob (add the contacts in this order) ;
Then you get a reply from John, you read it and answer him : everything's OK ;
Then you get a reply from Chris, you read it and answer him : the reply is sent to Chris, John and Bob !

As far as I can remember, I was taping the SMS notification to answer him. I don't know if it does matter or not to reproduce the issue.

I can probably do some tests this week-end, just tell me if that's necessary :)

François ( 2014-09-05 10:17:58 +0200 )edit

1

Everything matters :)

Thanks I will create an internal issue for this.

stezz ( 2014-09-05 13:30:03 +0200 )edit

Great, thanks a lot :)

François ( 2014-09-05 13:35:42 +0200 )edit

2

Three further things you could consider now you have found the filing bug:

In the conversation view, on the multiple sender line (with the little square boxes) show how many recipients that message went to. Could scrolling names be implemented to show who got the messages?
Tie in delivery reports to the single threads and the multiple threads, so you can see at a glance from the multiple sending part who did/did not get the message.
When an incoming reply comes from someone who has just received a message sent to several people the phone says 'You have recently contacted this person and several others... would you like your Jolla phone to re-transmit this reply to everyone, prefixed with 'Joe Blogs said: ...' Or something like that. If you agreed, you'd get taken immediately to the multiple message sending screen with the incoming text, prefixed by 'Joe Bloggs said at xx:xx: ' ready to edit and send to everyone on the list.

markcoley ( 2014-09-14 11:58:28 +0200 )edit

1

is a good idea IMHO, probably not even complicated to implement. Will propose internally and see where it goes.
isn't that already implemented? The single threaded conversations have delivery reports. Putting that also in the multithread would feel like an info overload to me.
Not sure of the utility of this one :) SMS is not intended to be a group conversation tool and forcing it to become such is quite ambitious. Multi-threaded conversations are intended to be one-to-many not many-to-many.

stezz ( 2014-09-14 13:34:28 +0200 )edit

3

answered 2015-05-11 19:02:55 +0200

cpcompany
31 ●3 ●4

updated 2015-05-11 19:03:27 +0200

Cracked it. After sending a text to multiple contacts you will get a reply from some. These arrive in the texts list and are SOMETIMES marked on the left of the contact's name by a filled and a hollow square. Such replies retain the original multiple-contacts list (you can swipe from the right after opening the message to see the list but cannot remove any contacts from it) and if replied to, everyone on the list gets the new message. And this can happen many months later if your less-used contacts text you. Solution was to delete that thread of messages and restart one with the "offending" contact.

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Well, when the "hollow square" is present, it's pretty clear to me that it represents a list of contacts and that the message will be sent to all the contacts.

The real issue (for me) is when the marker doesn't appear (e.g. when you tap the notification).

François ( 2015-05-12 11:45:11 +0200 )edit

1

Well, I see, the thread emulation in the jolla-messages app ui based on SMS/text msg seems to be useful to some people. Unfortunately it is not to me. In my case incoming messages of some (not all) recipients get still grouped to an SMS broadcast message (Happy new year) and after 5 weeks they are all unrelated. Plain annoying and plain wrong.

I would be very glad to have this configurable ( "Do not group messages Yes/No") or having the ability to ungroup message threads in the pulldown menu ("Split message group into individual messages"). I do even volunteer to implement a proposal for the jolla guys. But obviously I'd need a hand on the code of jolla-messages. It might be that Sailfish 2.1 release brings some help here.

joacimplack ( 2016-02-02 18:44:45 +0200 )edit

2

answered 2014-02-25 23:29:55 +0200

This post is a wiki. Anyone with karma >75 is welcome to improve it.

updated 2014-02-25 23:29:55 +0200

Tanghus
10524 ●85 ●118 ●125

https://github.com/tanghu...

Duplicate of https://together.jolla.com/question/7973/sms-sending-to-multiple-recipients-problems-with-delivery-reports-and-received-replies/

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Reopened, the dupe you link to does not quiet cover the issue and was initially about something else...

chemist ( 2014-04-17 13:22:31 +0200 )edit

This is different bug. I had sms conversation with two contacts A and B. After this I tried to send sms to only for contact B by choosing its own conversation. Jolla decided to send it also for A and sent message shows in all conversations, A,B and group sms A+B

TL;DR first sent sms for two contacts then tried to reply for one of these contacts, but sms got sent for both again

tabasko ( 2014-04-17 13:27:26 +0200 )edit

1

answered 2014-09-04 22:08:32 +0200

dom1n1kus
146 ●4 ●7 ●11

I only had this happen to me in the last weeks for the first time since I hadn't sent group sms before, but seeing that something that annoying and unacceptable has first been reported in FEBRUARY and still isn't fixed doesn't exactly reinforce my trust in Jolla :/

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1

It's not a matter of trust. It's a matter of resources. And jolla is a tiny company. Not an excuse. Just reality.

ApB ( 2014-09-04 22:51:32 +0200 )edit

It is a bit of a matter of trust. One reason to plump for Jolla was their shining principles for upholding privacy. And in the first week I have a singularly private sms reply to one contact sent to everyone who had been previously been included in a "mail-out" sms about my wife's medical progress. No warning - just 15 sent sms messages appearing. This could have been extremely embarrassing.There is also a financial cost for each sms.

cpcompany ( 2015-02-12 22:49:11 +0200 )edit

Replying to a reply of a multiple recipients SMS can cause huge embarrassment

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