Last week we informed you that an unspecified number of smartphone owners of the product line Galaxy received a notification from Samsung at the end of the week with only the number "1" on it. A notification with the number "1" appeared twice in a row on the smartphone display of the mentioned users, which simply disappeared after tapping. The occurrence of the notification was also reported by Czech and Slovak users, and its appearance at first sight had no consequence in the form of launching a specific application or activating a specific function. Samsung later issued a statement saying the notification was not sent to users on purpose and was related to the Find My Mobile app. This application is used to easily find a lost device, or to remotely lock or erase it. However, some users expressed concern about whether there could have been a data leak and a threat to their privacy.
Samsung first dispelled these concerns in the mentioned official statement, where it clarified that it was an internal test and added that it will do its best to prevent such a mistake from happening again. Closer informace but the company did not say. Not long after, however, some users began to report that they had discovered the personal information of complete strangers in their account. Most of them then logged into their accounts and changed their passwords. On the discussion platform Reddit, some users reported that when they logged into their Samsung Shop account, they saw other users' phone numbers, email addresses, purchase details, as well as postal addresses or the last four numbers of payment cards.
Samsung subsequently admitted in its statement, published on The Register website, that some user data may have been leaked. But she emphasized that only a small number of users were affected by the error. “A technical error resulted in a small number of users gaining access to other users' details. As soon as we were made aware of the incident, we removed the ability to log in to the store on our website until we fixed the error," a company spokeswoman said, adding that the company would contact affected users.
