Odd appearances

[silasp]

Hi. I've had two unusual items appear on my two Samsung devices in one day. This seems most suspicious to me because I just the other day read an article about some new Android malware.

On my Galaxy Tab A an Android-like icon I've never seen appeared on my home screen labelled "com.lat.activities" (see image). Googling that gave me nothing. I'm reluctant to click it. Has anyone seen that?



Also, on my Note 8 a "Find My Mobile" notification with two ones below it keeps appearing. From what I've read this might happen after setting up a Find My Mobile account, which I haven't done.

I would appreciate any help.

 

[svim]

Samsung did own up to erroneously pushing out a false Find My Phone message:
https://lifehacker.com/why-you-got-a-weird-1-notification-on-your-samsung-andr-1841812992

 

[mikedt]

Apparently Samsung screwed up.
BBC News - Samsung explains mystery alert sent overnight
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51572775

 

[Hadron]

Samsung claim (predictably) that only a small number of people were affected, but I know people who changed a bunch of passwords yesterday after suspecting they'd been hacked, so unless I'm somehow the epicentre of this (despite having a Samsung) I think they're trying to downplay the number affected.

 

[silasp]

Thanks for the info on that Find My Mobile notification. I feel a little less paranoid about my phone. The tab is a different story. That is a peculiar icon.

 

[svim]

...The tab is a different story. That is a peculiar icon.

Regarding 'com.lat.activities.Main...' that's in that screen capture you posted, use any file manager app and look at your internal storage /Android/data folder. That's the general user location for most apps to store different config, settings, and other misc. data. That's the typical naming convention -- i.e. com.google.android.youtube, or com.sand.airdroid, or com.whatever. So while that may be tied to some unwanted malware the odds are there's an app you've installed or was previously installed with some kind of name with 'lat' in it or a name relative to the developer of the app.

 

[Nia_Davis1]

I had the same notification on my Note 8.

 

[silasp]

Regarding 'com.lat.activities.Main...' that's in that screen capture you posted, use any file manager app and look at your internal storage /Android/data folder. That's the general user location for most apps to store different config, settings, and other misc. data. That's the typical naming convention -- i.e. com.google.android.youtube, or com.sand.airdroid, or com.whatever. So while that may be tied to some unwanted malware the odds are there's an app you've installed or was previously installed with some kind of name with 'lat' in it or a name relative to the developer of the app.

Svim, I followed the steps- opened My Files/Internal storage/Android/data. There were 1106 folders but none beginning with "com.lat." I did a search for "lat" but the only result was "platform".

Curiouser and curiouser.