It has been only a few short days since it was discovered that the Samsung Galaxy S10’s fingerprint scanner — a feature that Samsung praised before the launch — turned out to be quite flawed. Now, the company started developing a patch, promising to deliver it as soon as possible.
Samsung seemed quite proud of its ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, which came as an advanced technology on its Galaxy S10. The company praised it quite a bit, stating that it is more secure and faster than any previous scanner, as well as most, if not all, other security methods.
Needless to say, as soon as the phone was launched, it did not take long for people to start complaining about the scanner’s speed, so that part was clearly not true. Then, only days ago, it also became apparent that security is not that good either.
In fact, thanks to cheap screen protectors, it turned out that pretty much anyone could unlock the phone with their own fingerprint. Samsung reacted quickly, promising to patch the issue as soon as possible. However, another thing to keep in mind is that this is not only a flaw found on Galaxy S10. The same problem was discovered on S10+, Note 10, as well as Note 10+.
In other words, every model that came out this year, featuring ultrasonic fingerprint scanners, is affected, as Samsung itself admitted. The problem comes from the way the models are trying to improve fingerprint registering and recognizing. Some screen protectors may confuse the scanners due to their textures and patterns that the scanner might mistake for a fingerprint.
Then, when someone else tries to unlock the phone, the scanner would recognize parts of the screen protector as part of the owner’s print, which would be enough to unlock the phone, even though the rest is an entirely different fingerprint.
As mentioned, Samsung promised to take care of the issue as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the company recommends that everyone with registered fingerprints removes any third-party screen protection from their phone right away. After the tech gets updated, users will need to re-register their prints, and no screen protector should be included this time, although it is best to remove them altogether and avoid any risks.
Did you buy one of the affected Samsung devices? Did you know about the fingerprint scanner issue? Let us know your thoughts on the matter in the comments.
Images are courtesy of Shutterstock, Pixabay.
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