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Samsung’s unintentional notification posts no threat to its users

By EG Manilag, Staff Writer

Samsung mistakenly sent a notification to a limited number of Samsung Galaxy devices, leading to many people believing they were hacked or there was a data breach.

The accidental notification was received through the Find My Mobile app and had only two number one (1) digits displayed on it. Samsung UK stated and confirmed via Twitter, @SamsungUK, that the notification was pushed unintentionally during “internal testing” and that there is no need to worry because it will have no effect on one’s device. They also apologized for any inconvenience that was made and said they will work further to prevent this kind of case from happening in the future.

 “@SamsungMobile So myself and many other Samsung users have all reported receiving a notification from the “Find My Mobile” app saying “1”… I clicked it and nothing happened. Check app info and it used 20 percent of my battery? Did all our phones just get hacked?” Alex Rhynold (@alexrhynold) tweeted.

The mysterious “1/1” notification, when clicked on, immediately disappeared, and drained a substantial amount of their phones’ battery percentage, as Rhynold and other Twitter users tweeted. Additionally, Galaxy users that have no Find My Mobile app originally installed on their device, still received the strange notification.

The latest Galaxy Z Flip devices, as well as other Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series such as S9, S10, Note10, and Note10+, were among the popular targets that received the bug notification.

After this incident, a lot of confusion, rumours, and opinions about a potential data breach started to permeate on the internet, particularly on Twitter and even news media sites. Worries and fears sparked because of the idea that the Find My Mobile app is a mobile tracker that not only holds details of location histories, but also holds the ability to back up and delete an entire data installed on the device. Some Galaxy users on Twitter fear that this accident can potentially compromise the security of their personal data stored on the device. Samsung has since clarified that though there was a data breach at the same time of the Find My Phone notification, they are not related.

According to tech website sammobile.com, Samsung’s official comment on the matter is as follows. “The notification was sent to Galaxy devices powered by Android Oreo or later. We can assure our users that this notification does not affect their devices in any way.”

This malfunction caused by the South Korean tech giant is not the first time. Back in 2019, Samsung Galaxy s10 and Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus users were reportedly locked, with only a factory reset as an option.