Caller could hear me w/ Direct Voicemail on S26U

SheldonCooper — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 23:25:45 GMT

I wanted to flag what may be a serious privacy issue with Direct Voicemail on my S26 Ultra and see whether anyone else can reproduce it.

Here is what happened:

I had Direct Voicemail enabled and did not answer an incoming call. The caller was routed into the Direct Voicemail workflow so they could leave a message. At that time, I was actively speaking on a work video conference.

Afterward, the caller told me they could hear me talking in the background while they were leaving the voicemail. They said they could even tell I was on a work call.

That is very concerning.

My expectation with a feature like Direct Voicemail is that if I do not answer the phone, the caller should hear only the voicemail workflow or system greeting, not live audio from my microphone or environment. If this behavior is real and reproducible, it creates an obvious privacy risk.

A few reasons this worries me:

A caller may be able to hear private conversations even though the call was never accepted
People may assume they are safely ignoring a call when audio is still being exposed
This could be especially problematic in work, medical, legal, or family situations

I would like to know if others are seeing the same thing.

If anyone is willing to test, here is a simple way:

Enable Direct Voicemail
From another phone, call your Galaxy device
Do not answer
While the caller is being routed through Direct Voicemail, speak near the phone or have a conversation in the room
Ask the caller whether they can hear any background audio from your side before you actually pick up

If you test this, it would help to share:

Carrier
Whether Wi-Fi Calling was enabled
Whether Bluetooth was connected

I am posting this because I want to know whether this is an isolated bug on my device or something more widespread. If others can reproduce it, Samsung should investigate it as a privacy issue.

Has anyone else experienced this, or can anyone here test and report back?

Re: Caller could hear me w/ Direct Voicemail on S26U

meself — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 23:33:28 GMT

Think i seem this before

Re: Caller could hear me w/ Direct Voicemail on S26U

PlayboyZay — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 14:09:30 GMT

Well this is concerning. I've been testing it consistently over the past few days and I never experienced this. I have GoogleFi and Wi-Fi Calling is enabled but I never tested with bt connected

Re: Caller could hear me w/ Direct Voicemail on S26U

supertoast — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 16:51:50 GMT

This is happening to me as well. Running OneUI 8.5 Beta on S25+. I just tried disabling the "live translate" feature to see if it is related, but in any case I would not expect my microphone to be picking up anything when Direct Voicemail is taking an incoming call...

topic Caller could hear me w/ Direct Voicemail on S26U in Galaxy S26

Caller could hear me w/ Direct Voicemail on S26U

Re: Caller could hear me w/ Direct Voicemail on S26U

Re: Caller could hear me w/ Direct Voicemail on S26U

Re: Caller could hear me w/ Direct Voicemail on S26U