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Comment by forcer | Hacker News Reader

I guess simplest fix for the user is to disable MMS? I don't think its that popular feature anyway?

It's hugely popular in the U.S., where most "all you can eat" text messaging plans don't charge extra for it.

If the exploit affect Stagefright[1] ("a media playback engine at the native level"), it could affect many messaging apps.

[1] http://source.android.com/devices/media.html

Wut? MMS is extremely popular, given that picking the messaging app to share photos and videos will use MMS.

It's certainly not popular in the UK. It's just too expensive. It costs ~ £0.50 per mms to send so people will just use email / facebook / whatsapp / whatever.

Perhaps in USA is popular, in Spain and Italy it is not very popular because it is expensive and other messaging solutions are used, like Whatsapp

MMS as in telecom operator carried multimedia messages?

I thought phones didn't even support this anymore. I've never seen anybody using it, and I wouldn't know how to send one.

All the multimedia messages I see people using are transmitted through the Internet.

In my experience in the US, it's still the primary way of sending graphics/pictures via phone.

Yep, didn't point that. My experience is at Brazil.

It really boils down to if people pay or not.

In the US most people are still on a monthly plan that includes "unlimited texts" (inc. MMS). In many other places a single MMS can cost you between 5c-$1, so people use WhatsApp, Google+, or many other free (or cheaper) alternatives.

But MMS is definitely popular in certain regions. It is also very unpopular in regions. If you're in the UK you could very easily disable MMS, but in the US? I wouldn't...

Open text messaging app on android -> attach image -> hit send

There, it sent an MMS. It's transparent to the user.

Non-MMS: Hangouts to another Google user, Whatsapp, Telegram, Viber, etc etc

Can you actually disable MMS on Android phones? You can stop the default messaging app from automatically downloading them on my phpne, but I can’t find a way to completely disable them.

Is removing the MMS options under the APN enough to do this?

That's a good question. Presumably if your phone doesn't have network access for MMS it can't download the message in the first place?

Just set you MMS settings to something that looks valid (so the phone will accept them) but non-working. There is then no way it's going to download 'em.

You can disable auto retrieve of MMS in the messaging applications

Most carriers will disable texting wholly to your account on request. That's an option.

I'm not sure video MMS are popular, but I send a lot of picture MMS texts. Considering it is included on T-Mobile's Simple Choice and doesn't require the recipient to sign up to some service to receive them, it is pretty convenient.

If this issue got bad I might disable it. But it would be unfortunate to have to do so.

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