An SMS I Didn’t Send, Courtesy of Google Messages

I have dual-sim Google Pixel 8 pro which one SIM card I use as a main one and the second one is strictly for mobile data only. The data sim is prepaid one with 2 months of credit. What happened now is that a SMS was sent from data SIM and now I don’t have enough money for the data plan because I am little bit short on the credit. I don’t also use RCS since I have other encrypted apps for that and I heard it can send SMS for verification (but there is not information from Google)…

On saturday I have gotten an update for my Google Pixel 8 pro. In this update I got some useless update (as usual) which wanted me to set my profile visible to my contacts. Since I didn’t want for simple SMS another addons I selected from the drop down menu “No-one”, hoping this is the equivalent of “I don’t want it” since this option was missing and there was no way how to see my messages without saying continue. Well after selection “no-one” I saw my messages and I thought that it was over.

On monday I was checking how much MB of data I have left on my data SIM card I felt disbelieve as I saw that I lost somehow credit from my prepaid data SIM. The amount of credit lost was equivalent to 1 SMS, which I was absolutely sure I didn’t sent it. I have looked into my credit logs to find out that indeed there was a sent SMS to number 420773800895 which I didn’t recognize and was not in my contacts. After a little bit of online searching I was quite certain it was a google number. With this information I remembered that I had this nonsense popup on saturday in Google Messages. I have checked my system settings if both of my SIMs were used for SMS but only the non-data one was used. So I had a theory that Google Messages sent SMS from SIM card which was not meant for SMS without my knowledge.

Since this is now a Google problem because I have use Google Pixel smartphone with Google Messages I have contacted the Google support asking if Google Message sends SMS along with the phone number and everything. After 1 hour of repeating my question the support ended my ticket for being unproductive. This really made my mad. When I bought a flag-ship phone from Google I expected I will get some support when their apps are doing something bad. Instead of actual help I was told to secure my phone, install updates, contact my bank (totally unrelated since it’s prepaid SIM) and to contact my bank because google did not bill me. At this point I have tried contacting google support with numerous problems with their apps and ecosystem but each time it was just lost time. Their support agents can only barely speak english (with frequent miscommunication) and only take time to process your ticket to make you terminate the chat. I would expect them to at least try to answer the question.

For a question “Does Google Message send SMS for verification without user interaction” I would expect yes/no answer with possible “maybe, we don’t have that information”. Instead I was gaslighted that I had a security problem with my phone? I don’t think now that Google support will solve any problem. The most useful information you can get from them is “send feedback via the app”.

I have also tried contacting my local prepaid SIM support which reacted quickly, based on the information I provided (even less than what I have sent to google) they found out that it was google verification number. And well, this is where their abilities end, which I understand, it is a Google issue.

I have found hidden menu in Google Messages to “use it without an account”. Why was it hidden under accounts? Why even a basic SMS app now needs to have an account? I don’t know. I have tried searching for some option to disable SMS for a SIM card, there is none. There are no permissions for apps, and even if there were, I doubt that Google would apply those restrictions to their apps. Maybe installing GrapheneOS would help, I wonder.

This whole situation and Google support especially made me feel terrible. Even my experience with Google phone was not great. I have tried giving Google another chance since previously I had used Xiomi Mi A1 with LineageOS. Well… second chance was blown, I am not doing the same mistake again. When you have the chance to avoid Google, take it. Seriously, I don’t feel like I am the owner of the phone, I can’t control it since there is no customizability, no options, it is lacking very basic features like saving battery with charging only to 80%… I am deeply disappointed. Hopefully it won’t send SMS now that I don’t have account logged in…