Samsung’s push push notifications help detect data leakage

Last week, users of Samsung Galaxy devices from around the world (regardless of the mobile operator and device model) received strange push notifications with the subject “1” and the content of the message “1”. These messages came from the Samsung Find My Mobile application, which people did not use or did not know at all about its existence on the device. With this application you can find a lost phone or tablet, as well as protect data on the device.

As it turned out, sending out units on behalf of Find My Mobile was a mistake – the developers accidentally sent messages during internal testing, and the company claimed that the problem affected only a “limited number” of Galaxy devices.

Now, The Register is reporting that due to this mailing of weird push notifications, British Samsung users have discovered a data leak problem.

The fact is that after receiving incomprehensible messages, puzzled device owners from the UK decided just in case to change passwords on the manufacturer’s website (http://samsung.com/UK), where they found other people’s personal data, including names, phone numbers, addresses, Email addresses and information about previous orders.

Samsung representatives confirmed to The Register that there was a technical error and “a small number of users were able to access the data of other users.” Later, the company clarified that we are talking about about 150 people. However, earlier Samsung claimed that push notifications also received a very small percentage of owners of Galaxy devices, while on the network you can find complaints from thousands of victims. As a result, the ability to enter the store on the manufacturer’s website was temporarily disabled (until the problem was fixed).