Samsung admits to leaking personal data of around 150 users

Late last week, Samsung Galaxy smartphone users around the globe received a strange notification from the Find My Mobile app which simply contained the number ‘1’. At the time, Samsung stated it was accidentally sent during internal testing and has “no effect on your device”.

Today, the South Korean tech giant has admitted that another glitch occurred at almost the same time, resulting in a “small number” of users that were able to briefly access information from other Samsung users, including names, addresses and the last four digits of their payment cards.

In a statement made to SamMobile, the smartphone maker claims that the two issues were unrelated and that it was purely a coincidence that they occurred at around the same time. Samsung further clarified that the unintentional leak was the result of a technical error on the company’s UK website, and only affected 150 customers.

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Speaking with The Register, a spokesperson for Samsung provided some additional details on the issue: "A technical error resulted in a small number of users being able to access the details of another user. As soon as we became aware of the incident, we removed the ability to log in to the store on our website until the issue was fixed. We will be contacting those affected by the issue with further details."

That statement echoes Samsung’s official one on the mysterious “1” push notification – that, too, was said to only have affected a “limited number" of Galaxy devices, but based on an informal internal poll here at TechRadar, the reality seems to be that every Galaxy device user received the message.

Even without a direct link to the push notification debacle, the revelations around this new leak are concerning due to the type of personal data involved. And as with that Find My Phone glitch, Samsung has so far been tight lipped when it comes to providing specific details about the cause of the leak.