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m2FromReno's profile

Tutor

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10 Messages

Friday, October 14th, 2016 10:51 PM

messages arriving on Chinese characters

Long messages from friends and family are arriving at my phone in Chinese characters. Short msgs from the same people are ok. All phone settings are in English. Any ideas?

Contributor

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2 Messages

7 years ago

On two separate occasions, from two different people, I received this text as a response during a normal conversation:

䁄䁲䁯䁰䁰䁩䁮䁧䀠䁯䁦䁦䀠䁹䁯䁵䁲䀠䁣䁨䁥䁣䁫䀮䀠䁔䁨䁥䁲䁥䀠䁩䁳䀠䁡䀠䁰䁡䁰䁥䁲䀠䁹䁯䁵䀠䁮䁥䁥䁤䀠䁴䁯䀠䁳䁩䁧䁮䀮䀮䀮䁩䁴䁳䀠䁷䁩䁴䁨䀠䁴䁨䁥䀠䁥䁭䁰䁬䁯䁹䁥䁥䀠䁨䁡䁮䁤䁢䁯䁯䁫䀠堽�堽�

What is going on?! It's obviously a problem on my end. The person sending it doesn't see it, they see what they wrote. Even if they resend the message, I get the weird writing. Help!

Tutor

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6 Messages

7 years ago

nearly two weeks since this started and no fix from AT&T, seems they don't care about the customers

Voyager

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2 Messages

7 years ago

for clarity the issue is utf-8 to utf-16 encoding decoding.

 

If you take your message you recieve and use the following link:

 

http://string-functions.com/encodedecode.aspx

 

select utf-16 encoding and utf-8 decoding and it will show you the message (there will be a lot of '@' symbols in between every character but if you remove them, the message will be there).

Please fix this AT&T, you are clearly encoding the emojis wrong on your backend. 

Voyager

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2 Messages

7 years ago

your message was:

"Dropping off your check. There is a paper you need to sign...its with the employee handbook =X��=X��"

 

again this is a utf-8 to utf-16 problem with encoding.

 

just FYI for everyone else, you should probably just say that you are recieving chinese characters instead of posting the actual text if you don't want to also publish the SMS since it can be decoded.

Employee

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420 Messages

7 years ago

Hi @ticked61,

 

I am also having this issue with friends and family, so you aren't alone.  I assure you this is a very high priority problem, and I have updated the accepted solution today.  We hope to have it fixed soon. I definitely understand how frustrating this is.

 

Thanks for your patience.

 

Tim, AT&T Community Specialist

Master

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3.5K Messages

7 years ago

@ATTTimCS You should adjust this, it will affect ANY OS, including Windows, BB, and pretty much any other, since it's not a device-centric problem, it's the decoding being done on the AT&T text servers.


Thanks to those with the pointer to the website with the dynamic conversion:

http://string-functions.com/encodedecode.aspx

 

This is particularly handy, you could leave this open on your device, and cut-paste from the text into the page, to get the translation.

 

The "Solution" has been updated, by ATTCares, to reflect (hopefully) an EOW solution...

Teacher

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13 Messages

7 years ago

Helpful, detailed, and entertaining post here explaining what's going on and how to workaround it.  If you read the comments in the linked post, there are also some super helpful tips that take most of the "work" out of the "workaround."  Basically a one-click workaround.

Contributor

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1 Message

7 years ago

http://www.signsoftheword.com/

 

Someone has created a converter just for this so that you can decode your messages without the extra symbols. Makes things a little easier. Smiley Very Happy

Tutor

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10 Messages

7 years ago

All, I posted this back on the 14th, and I think all of the posts - from the "me, too's" to the "here's how you fix it" - have been fantastic.  That said, I'm glad that AT&T is going to solve the problem on their end.  While I appreciate the workarounds and details of the fixes that will translate the messages, I need to be able to open my phone and read my text messages first time around...and, after all...that's what we are all paying for.  So, MaBell, let us know when you fix it...and that's from a family of "pioneers" and "switchboard and information operators."

Contributor

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1 Message

7 years ago

nexus 6p here, happened while receiving texts from att iphone with ios 10, messages did contain emojis
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