Samsung Health app plagued with sexy spambots masquerading as challenges

Don’t fall for Vanessa’s challenge.

What you need to know

• Users have started reporting spambots in the Samsung Health app.
• The bots send users challenges while soliciting sexual favors through a website.
• Changing your Samsung Health settings may prevent the issue.

Samsung is known for including ads in their smartphones which can often be annoying, especially if you own a premium smartphone like the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. Fortunately, we can show you how to turn off ads on your Samsung phone, but even that isn’t a perfect solution. While Samsung’s ads are generally harmless, there appears to be a new kind of ad appearing on Samsung devices that is not as innocent, according to Reddit.

Some users on Reddit have been reporting spambots within the Samsung Health app. The bots appear as walking challenges in the Together tab, asking users to join their challenge. A shady link appears on the challenge card, and while it’s unclear what exactly happens when users accept the challenge, it’s likely not a good idea to do so.

We’ve reached out to Samsung for a comment but have yet to hear back. Until then, a possible solution for those receiving these notifications would be to navigate to the Samsung Health settings. Scroll down to the section marked “together” and you’ll see the option to change who you receive challenges from. You can select to receive them from anyone, friends, or to not receive them from anybody.

It’s not clear how widespread the problem is, but the examples from Reddit appear to come from the Netherlands and India. Unfortunately, the company making some of the best Android phones has to deal with spam in one of its first-party applications, but hopefully, Samsung can address it before someone, unfortunately, falls victim to one of these challenges.