How To Stop Any Phone From Sending SMS (Text Messages) Automatically | Stop The Hacker

At about 3:45pm yesterday, I picked up my Android phone. When I unlocked the phone, the first message I saw on the handset's screen was a notification from Glo which is the network service provider for one of the SIM cards on my phone. (SIM 2).

I noticed that two text messages had been sent from my phone while it was idle to two strange numbers, one of them ending in 045, and the second number, ending in 105.

Later that evening when I logged into my WhatsApp account that was linked to the same Glo number, I received a pop up that a verification code was requested for my account.

Then, I realised that a hacker was attempting to hack into my accounts by intercepting my messages, and automatically sending messages from my phone to his phone lines.

It didn't just stop there. Throughout the rest of that evening till the next day, my Globacom SIM card kept on sending SMS automatically. When it had finished depleting the account balance/airtime on the SIM card and no further SMS could be sent from that line, it switched over to sending messages from my second line, which is the SIM card on the first slot in my phone (MTN).

It was so persistent that it would send between 1-2 text messages from the MTN line within an interval of 5 minutes.

I began to search on Google for ways to stop sending messages from my phone lines automatically but to no avail. All the answers I found on the internet were addressing the issue of Android phones sending messages to a caller automatically when you didn't answer the call (e.g. I'm busy, call me later, etc).

When I realized I couldn't find the answer on the internet, I had to find a way to prevent the hacker from forwarding messages and automatically sending texts from my phone to his lines. I realized that if nothing was done, this hacker may be able to send sensitive data like verification codes, OTPs and tokens from my phone lines to his.

Perhaps that's the new way in which hackers are now hacking into people's accounts as people are now wiser and the older method of calling their victims to request for an OTP or verification code sent to their phones while pretending to be a customer care agent were no longer working for them (at least not with everybody. Many people especially those who have fallen victim once are aware of this trick).

While this is even truly the method hackers are using now is this. For most online accounts, an OTP must be entered back when a user wants to login from a new device; sometimes, also from a new location for the first time. One of the ways to determine that it's really the real account owner who is trying to gain access into the account is for him/her to enter back the OTP which is automatically generated by the system back to the online platform which may be a website, an app, etc.

Upon entering back the OTP correctly, it is then confirmed that's it's truly the user, because the user had previously provided and verified their phone number (sometimes,email address) on the system/website or application.

For hackers to successfully be able to hack into your account, they need to find a way to lay hold on the token or OTP which is generated by the service or system to your phone. Hence if you don't find a way to stop the automatic messages from sending from your phone, you are at the risk of not just spending your airtime balance for nothing, but more seriously data leak and privacy compromise. Your personal and private information would no longer be secret and private as they would be randomly sent from your phone to the hackers phone or computer automatically.

So how do you stop it when you've realized it?

Like I said, I wasn't able to find any suitable solution online. Hence, I started seeking out my own ways to solve it.

The first thing I did actually stopped it.

How I stopped it was to go into the message settings, and alter the message centre number. Not so fast. I didn't change anything much in there. I simply added a '1' after the last digit of my message centre numbers.

How does this work?

For your SIM to be a able to send a text message from your phone to another phone, it needs a message centre number which should be correct. Your carrier or mobile network provider has a unique message centre through which your Short Messaging is routed. If the message centre number is incorrect, you will not be able to send SMS messages from your phone.

If your phone uses three SIM cards, there would be three message centre numbers that correspond to each of the SIM cards on your device. Since my phone uses two SIM cards, I affixed '1' after the last digit of each message centre number. It must not necessarily be '1'. It could be '0', or any other figure. It's just a way of making the message centre number incorrect.

Here is what you must note before using this method.

This may not be a permanent solution but offers a quick fix to the issue. Hence, you need to take note of the following:

Every time you have to send a text message, you need to manually remember to remove the figure you added behind the last digit of the message centre number.

Do not alter the message centre number very much. Only add or remove a digit to or from a location you can easily remember later. Either from the end or beginning. Don't go and add digits in the center or in-between digits because you may not know exactly where you added it later on.

Alternative Route You Could Take 

If this were not to have worked for me, the next thing I would have done would be to contact the customer service for my phone lines, which should be able to run a check on my lines and stop the automatic message sending. This is because the problem is a phone line issue; definitely not an issue with the phone the SIM card is inserted in. Hence, even if you removed the SIM card from your android phone and insert it in a small torchlight phone or an iPhone. That wouldn't stop the automatic sending of messages from your phone line.

Why I find that altering the message centre number is the best solution for me is because, personally, I would be able to change the message centre number back to the correct one each time I need to send a message. I didn't change anything much after all. I'd just delete the last digit and it would be correct again.

Secondly, accessing the message centre number is simple and straight forward. To do so, click on Settings in your messaging application, scroll to Text Message Settings (SMS) and click on it, then open Message Centre Number and change it.

The last reason why I prefer this method is because no matter what the hacker does, be cannot make the SIM card to send messages automatically from the phone when the message centre number is incorrect. But the hacker could still hack back a SIM card to begin sending text messages automatically if the other method was used.

Another method that could stop the hacker is totally blocking their lines. This will work if you managed to save the phone number(s) the messages are being sent to. I got this idea later, so I didn't remember to save the phone numbers when I received the sent message pop up notification. The hacker may be routing your messages to more than one line. In this case, you need to block your phone sending SMS to those lines entirely.

This wraps it up. Everybody may not be techie and some people may not want to dabble into changing things every now and then when they wish to send a message. Hence, I have provided at least three (3) methods you can use to block or stop the automatic sending of messages from your phone line to other phone lines in this post.

Because this worked for me, I decided to share the method I used to help other people who might be facing the same issue, more so that I didn't find anyone provide a solution to it on the internet.

I hope this helps you stop the hacker from doing a lot of damages to you, your accounts, money, etc.