Samsung says a “small” number of customers has been affected by a data leak but insists the odd Find my Mobile error that worried users last week is not connected to the incident.
Last week, Samsung Galaxy device owners descended on public forums in their droves to ask about a perplexing ‘1’ notification sent via the Find My Mobile app.
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Strange and unexpected notifications from mobile apps can sometimes indicate your smartphone has been compromised in some way, but as it emerged that thousands of users had the same experience, the South Korean tech giant attempted to quell concerns by blaming the incident on a “server glitch” caused by “some test[s] on Samsung’s end to assure services are working.”
However, some users assumed that a hack had taken place and proactively logged into their accounts on the Samsung website to change their credentials.
At this stage, it emerged that some customers were able to see information belonging to others without authorization. On the UK version of Samsung’s website, names, telephone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, and order histories were reportedly exposed.
A Samsung representative told The Register that “a technical error resulted in a small number of users being able to access the details of another user.”
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“As soon as we became of aware of the incident, we removed the ability to log in to the store on our website until the issue was fixed,” the representative added.
According to the tech giant, fewer than 150 customers were affected, and Samsung intends to reach out to these individuals directly.
On Tuesday, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) admitted to a data breach leading to the exposure of confidential information belonging to approximately 1,600 individuals.
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The data leak occurred after a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request document was published on the FCA website without redacting the PII of consumers mentioned in the file, including names, telephone numbers, and addresses.
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