Advertisement

Samsung's fix for Galaxy S10 fingerprint scanning will roll out soon

You'll get an alert if your S10 or Note 10 has a registered fingerprint.

Samsung is acting on its promise to fix its fingerprint reader security flaw. The tech firm is alerting Galaxy S10, S10+, Note 10 and Note 10+ owners that it'll send a notification for the patch "within 24 hours" (clearly less time than that as you read this) for anyone who has registered a fingerprint on their device. You'll have a fix well before the weekend. Samsung is also asking anyone who has used the phone with a screen protector to delete and re-register their prints without the protector installed, since it might include "incorrect" info.

If you do get the update, you can't escape it -- the notice will stay until you install the fix.

It's a quick response, although it's arguably a necessary one. In theory, anyone could unlock the S10 or Note 10 if the phone had a cheap screen cover installed. The fix should ensure that Samsung's phones are looking for a finger on the glass, not textures that merely resemble a finger. Even if the likelihood of an intruder discovering the flaw wasn't that high, it clearly undermined Samsung's security claims and had consequences. Numerous banks even removed fingerprint sign-in support as a precautionary measure. If Samsung didn't patch this quickly, the uproar could easily have grown louder.