Samsung has apologised after it accidentally sent an alert to thousands of Samsung devices overnight.

Affected devices received a notification from Find My Mobile in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The alert did not contain any meaningful text and did nothing when it was tapped.
The message ready only "1" but spread panic among those who received it, since it was sent from an app that can be used to track a phone's location or remove the information stored on it.

In a statement, Samsung said the alert had been sent unintentionally to a "limited number" of devices. The company added that the message was the result of an internal test and that it had not done any harm to the phones that received it.

It appeared to affect any device with Samsung's Find My Mobile installed, even those which have the option disabled.