
Samsung accidentally sends 'Find My Mobile' notifications to Galaxy phones - xarpus
https://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-accidentally-sends-out-find-my-mobile-push-notification-galaxy-phones-worldwide
======
totalZero
This notification comes from an app that is designed to tell a remote user
where you are located. That was enough to spook me.

I dismissed the notification, deleted as much data from Samsung apps as
possible, and turned my phone off.

Rough moment to be a Samsung executive. They're just about the only top
smartphone manufacturer that doesn't manufacture the vast majority of their
handsets in China so presumably they are in position to take some market share
from the competition. Yet today we are seeing some fear about contagion in SK,
and this very strange notification that -- benign or not -- is going to scare
some users (e.g. me). I for one would like to see a formal statement made to
the public.

~~~
mbag
This spooked me as well. I never used any of the Samsung apps on my phone and
never created the Samsung account. Since apps come pre-installed, it was in
the back of my head that Samsung could access the data anyway, but I dismissed
it as company suicide to do something like this.

Since so many people received notification, it could be that some "Samsung God
mode" exists.

~~~
totalZero
On the idea that taking and sharing your personal data without an opt-in would
be company suicide:

Samsung has already hit this sort of scandal with its smart televisions and
nobody really cared.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/samsungs-warning-our-smart-tvs-
rec...](https://www.cnet.com/news/samsungs-warning-our-smart-tvs-record-your-
living-room-chatter/)

The expectation that the free market will keep companies from spying on
us...well, it would be nice, but increasingly it seems to be wishful thinking.

------
retSava
I don't know the best way to handle customer worries after sth like this, but
I'm sure "a samsung care ambassador replied on page 22" is not the best way.

At the very least, ensure that a google/bing/ddg/... search ends up in that
thread, where a pinned note explains it.

------
withinrafael
Here's a screenshot I took of what it looks like
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERM8lVvUwAA9kSl?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERM8lVvUwAA9kSl?format=jpg&name=large)

Not touching it.

~~~
tartrate
If you touch it it goes away.

------
alexmorley
From a Samsung Care Abassador on page 22 of comments:

> Hey everyone,

> From what I can tell, this is a some test on Samsung's end to assure
> services are working. U expect Samsung will make an official statement
> explaining but I want to mention it now to hopefully put some of you at
> ease.

> I hope this helps.

~~~
jsjddbbwj
Samsung Care Ambassador sounds like someone who answers questions in that
forum and doesn't get paid

~~~
dastx
Exactly and it sounds like they don't know why it happened either.

------
beatgammit
Linux phones can't come soon enough. I don't need many features, I just need
calls, texts, a web browser, and an SSH utility. I'm willing to give up a lot
of features just to have control over my phone.

Is it too much to ask for me to have exclusive control over my devices?

~~~
doublerabbit
A symbian phone from the 90’s could do all of this. Blackberry phones could do
this.

I miss the days where different manufacturers actually created their own phone
Firmware/OS.

------
markosaric
Happened to me too this morning! Spooky! I had to figure out how to delete
this app as it's not possible to do using normal interface:

In "About Phone" tap 7 times on the "Build Number" to enable "Developer
Options"

In "Developer Options" enable "USB Debugging"

Connect your phone to your laptop with your USB cable

Install "adb" (android-tools) on your computer

In a terminal type: adb devices

Then type: adb shell

Then type: pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.samsung.android.fmm

"FMM" is what they call "Find My Mobile"

You can remove other bloat too. Search for example for all Samsung apps using:
pm list packages | grep 'samsung'

That's it. Worked fine for me. Phone still works without any issues. Hopefully
I now get better battery too!

------
yumraj
Genuinely curious who comes up with titles like: Samsung _Care Ambassador_

~~~
jlgaddis
I wouldn't be surprised if that's one of those unpaid / volunteer things --
you know, where the company _allows_ one to provide free support to other
customers for, um, the "prestige" or "recognition" or something. Dell used to
do that with their forums and such, not sure if they still do.

Kinda like how years ago [0] folks who wanted you to design a web site for
them for free would try to bullshit you into believing that "the exposure"
would be worth _waaaaaaay_ more than any money that they might pay you.

\---

[0]: I'm assuming enough people finally said "FYPM" that this doesn't happen
so much anymore but I would not be shocked to find out I'm wrong.

------
BossingAround
This also freaked me out in the morning. Right after that, I randomly heard
about Google accusing Samsung of increasing the attack vector on their phones
[1].

[1] [https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-samsung-stop-
messing...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-samsung-stop-messing-with-
linux-kernel-code-its-hurting-android-security/)

------
wjd2030
Either a dev was playing around and oopsied or they got hacked.

~~~
thecatspaw
and this is the reason why all my tests are reasonable sane strings which
customers could see and not something like "fuck 1", "fuck 2", etc

~~~
RL_Quine
On the other hand I'd say that having them be that is more incentive to keep
things safe.

------
me551ah
Samsung phones have only gotten worse over the years with the additional
bloatware that they preinstall on phones. All Android phones get 'Find my
Device' which is a service provided by google which works well. There is no
reason for Samsung to install an app which can remotely track location data on
it's phones and send data to it's own servers.

Another prime example of it is the preinstalled bloatware 'Samsung pay mini'
that they bundle with all phones. My phone has samsung pay mini installed and
I cannot remove or uninstall it. It is a persistent and annoying bar which
sits at the bottom of my launcher screen so it's always visible. Force
stopping it only makes it restart in a few minutes. I am never buying a
Samsung again

~~~
Lapz
There actually is a reason for find my Samsung. It works better than Google's
find my Android [1]. The pay mini thing can also be disabled from within the
Samsung pay settings [2].

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/f4wq35/i_lost_my_d...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/f4wq35/i_lost_my_device_recently_i_found_out_that/)
[2] [https://imgur.com/a/H9ht808](https://imgur.com/a/H9ht808)

~~~
antongribok
On my S10+ the option to disable Pay Mini seems to be called: "Use Favorite
Cards" (not "Quick Access").

------
superbrane
For sure someone at Samsung is now called "No. 1 Developer" :)

------
kbumsik
I'm not an Android dev, but isn't it nothing about privacy or remote control
(apart from sending the notification) contrary to the reactions in the
comments?

AFAIK, Android/iOS push notifications works quite independently from the app
itself. Even if the app is not running in the background the app server can
send a message to Google/Apple (not to Samsung) and Google/Apple send the
message to the device to show the message. Correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~
londons_explore
On Android the app needs code to receive the push message and post a
notification.

On IOS, the app developer has less control.

------
kbumsik
Samsung officially announced (at least in Korea region) that it was an
accident during internal app testing and there is no effect on the device.

(The link is from a korean forum)

[https://clien.net/service/board/park/14612726](https://clien.net/service/board/park/14612726)

------
undebuggable
Just noticed the notification today morning and was wondering which bloatware
app I missed when uninstalling them all and accidentally bricking the device
couple of times. Meantime I'm still not able to set up properly the
notifications for WhatsApp, RSS client, and email client to let me know when
email/message/call is arriving, just random notification sounds and no clue
what happened and where... all I know is that "the phone needs attention".
Bring back the 3.5mm audio jack to the iPhone and I'm buying it instantly.

------
balena
I'm starting to think Samsung is running a social experiment instead

------
rdiddly
That's hilarious, this happened to me right before I saw this was my top
story. (I use the hide feature a lot.)

Anyway I guess no one's targeting me personally, so I'll just wait for the
post mortem.

------
teekert
These companies have an insane amount of control, power and insight into our
lifes via our telephones. When we see but a sliver of said power, we freak
out.

------
teekert
At least LineageOS's notification (2018) that they were going to use your
phone to mine some custom crypto currency turned out to be a joke and not an
error :) [0] Also freaked me out btw.

[0] [https://www.androidauthority.com/lineageos-april-
fools-85270...](https://www.androidauthority.com/lineageos-april-
fools-852705/)

------
amaccuish
As someone who was once "all Samsung", Samsung are really bad at software.
Their apps crashed all the time, their websites frequently errored out, they
managed to make using Android painful, SmartThings is a fiasco etc.

I wouldn't trust them with any of my personal data.

------
z3t4
While remote tracking, bricking, etc is very useful, I do not trust any
company to make it secure enough, so the features becomes moot. It would be
better if I could create a encryption key myself to be sure that only I had
access to those features.

------
Benjamin_Dobell
Wow, is there an article for this yet? Just happened to me. Not good.

~~~
whalesalad
A bunch of people got the single digit 1 as a notification.

Sounds pretty benign to me. I can think of a half dozen ways to accidentally
do that (assuming an environment without adequate safeguards)

~~~
Taniwha
They just obtained the location of EVERY phone - you don't think that wasn't
an invasion of privacy

~~~
masonic
There's no evidence of that.

I got the '1' on one of my Samsung Galaxys before I saw this. I tried using
FMP from another device on the same Samsung account. I got separate
notifications regarding that it reported my location and reported nearby WiFi
servers it could find.

The '1' notification indicated no such detail.

------
enitihas
I am thinking of buying a new android device, but it seems all manufacturers
include loads of bloatware. Is there any manufacturer apart from Google who
offer lean android devices?

~~~
ailideex
I think any AndroidOne phone should. A major issue for me is that there is
almost no Android phone that is not quite bad. I had a Nokia 7 Plus which ran
AnroidOne and it was probably one of the worst phones I ever had. I bought a
Samsung afterwards because the Nokia was not usable and while the Samsung was
also quite horrible it was at least usable. Motorola also offers the Motorola
One Vision but I can't vouch for their quality and I would guess it is also
rather bad.

~~~
jtylr
What were your issues with the Nokia? I've had mine sitting around for several
months now with a broken charging port, a persistent smudge down the left side
of the screen and it likes to restart when fast charging.

Other than that, it was a great budget phone. For now, I'm using the Motorola
One Vision and have found it to be great for the price too.

------
totetsu
99pi just released an episode about that font.
([https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-i...](https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-
id/383390iB4B1509B1DC9C547?v=1.0) )
[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/fraktur/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/fraktur/)

------
A-Train
Same here. I saw it literally 1 minute ago and there is already a hackernews
article.

------
kumarvvr
Just saw it.

It said

" 1 1 "

------
poushkar
+1 here

------
sir_brickalot
Question:

I never ever created an account with Samsung. Can I still ask for all their
collected data under GDPR for my phone ID (MAC address, IMEI)? I'm guessing
something in that phone is probably calling home, right?

------
antongribok
A better article perhaps:

[https://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-accidentally-sends-
ou...](https://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-accidentally-sends-out-find-my-
mobile-push-notification-galaxy-phones-worldwide)

~~~
dang
Ok, we've changed to that from
[https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Note10/Find-my-mobile-
se...](https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Note10/Find-my-mobile-sending-
notifications/td-p/1113744). Thanks!

------
willis936
Why was the title changed? This is a samsung specific issue and the loss of
specificity detracts from the title.

~~~
dang
_If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the
site name will be displayed after the link._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

(this will be moot shortly, because I'm going to change the URL)

------
DanAtC
I’d say “you get what you pay for” but it’s Samsung; I don’t know what you’re
paying for.

