Samsung Note 3: "Prevention Information" Message

[TJCacher]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

I tapped on the stub program a day or two ago, and it was still telling me I needed to download KNOX, so it's currently not installed on my phone. If yours did get installed somehow, perhaps you used some other application that required it? I don't really know.

FWIW, over on the Sprint forum thread about this, they're saying, "We are aware of this issue and working on a fix. The error is is erroneous and related to how KNOX perceives WiFi data streams. Turn off WiFi and it goes away." Someone replied to that saying he/she doesn't use WiFi and still has the problem, so I'm not sure about the cause. But it does looks like Sprint is working on a patch for us (no ETA yet though). This suggests that the fix is going to have to come from our carriers, and we won't be able to solve it ourselves. Well, rooting and doing stuff might, but the carriers won't recommend that, of course. I hope this is of some help.

[TLDR for my longish reply below:

Knox can produce other similarly-worded notifications with the same notification title as the one we're having trouble with. These may be legitimately-produced protection violation messages for those intentionally using Knox, unlike the one we are being erroneously bombarded with.]

I think one possibility for non-WiFi users reporting the problem is that Knox can generate other notifications labeled "Protection Information" which are very similarly worded to the WiFi-related one I think most of us are talking about.

In searching for a solution to this problem I ran across a posting on Samsung's Developer forum. It was from an app developer seeking advice from Samsung on why their app (unnamed on the forum, but referred to by the developer as a prominent Play Store app) was being flagged by Knox for improper access of some sort.

The wording of the Knox warning cited by the developer was similar to, but different from, the one we've all been talking about on this thread.

Samsung's reply to this post, by the way, was informative (in a geeky developer way, that is).

After examining a code sample supplied by the developer, Samsung concluded that the code was attempting to access USB storage without first registering its intent to do so and obtaining permission for the access.

So the situation, to me, seems to be this:

1. Samsung is now actively using the Knox subsystem's ability to monitor running apps as they access various APIs, and allowing Knox to close running apps and generate (semi-)informative notifications on certain devices.

2. On at least some of our devices, this part of Knox is now active even if we haven't installed the Knox app or intentionally activated other features of Knox. There doesn't seem to be reliable information available for exactly which combinations of devices/carriers/device versions this is currently being done for.

3. Some kind of recent Knox-related change has triggered a false-positive notification that is related to the use of WiFi.

4. There is widespread confusion about what Knox is and does, whether or not any part of Knox is active on a given device, and exactly what Knox-related features Samsung and/or our carriers have the ability to remotely enable or change without our knowledge or permission.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[slatyford]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

I dont have knox installed and I'm not carrier specific so niether of these ideas are fully correct.
I havent had the pop up since I disabled the2 ANT apps and unchecked the "verify apps" box in Google Setting app that mysteriously appeared on my phone the day before the pop upstarted.
I have rebooted the phone and jummped different wifi and no pop ups so seems sorted for me..........for now

 

[Laurent Morel]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

I am following up. I posted my comment at post #90 telling you guys after I removed Facebook, the message never appeared again. I forgot to mention that I cleared the data for the Knox Notification Manager app. So I reinstalled Facebook later. And I started to get the message AFTER I rebooted my phone. I removed Facebook again, cleared the data for the Knox Notification Manager app and the message is gone and never came back. For over 16 hours now. I understand it's not app specific but this is what worked for me. Again, KNOX seems to be tripped by a false positive THEN gets stuck in a loop reporting an issue. Good luck finding out what tripped it. I can live without Facebook. I'm actually more productive and ..... have a life. What do you know.

 

[TJCacher]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

I dont have knox installed and I'm not carrier specific so niether of these ideas are fully correct.
I havent had the pop up since I disabled the2 ANT apps and unchecked the "verify apps" box in Google Setting app that mysteriously appeared on my phone the day before the pop upstarted.
I have rebooted the phone and jummped different wifi and no pop ups so seems sorted for me..........for now

OK, I'll try to make it clearer.

Unless you have a device with an unlocked boot loader AND you have flashed a ROM that doesn't have the Knox subsystem installed, then you definitely *do* have Knox whether you think so or not. Samsung put Knox on every Note 3.

Where the confusion is arising is this:

1) The term "Knox" is being used imprecisely in most cases to refer to more than one thing.

2. All Note 3 devices have a Knox subsystem.

3. Some Note 3 devices allow you to disable the Knox subsystem and some don't.

4. There is a UI for the Knox subsystem. It is an "app". The Knox subsystem itself is not an app. Just because you don't have the UI app installed doesn't mean you don't have Knox.

5. Some Note 3 devices shipped with the Knox UI app. Some did not. In some cases, the lack of the UI app being present was apparently an oversight by Samsung, which is likely to be corrected by either a Samsung or a carrier OTA at some point. In other cases its removal (most likely by a carrier) appears to have been intentional. Few facts and lots of conjecture on this at the moment.

5. Even referring to the Knox subsystem is insufficiently precise, since it serves several disparate functions. Its ability to monitor and close apps for violating a Samsung (or carrier or corporate) security policy is only one of its features. This feature is the one that is now active on some (but not all) Note 3 devices at this point. That feature apparently does not require the UI app to be installed or be active to operate. This feature's behavior is largely driven by a system level "Security Policy" database that, on some devices, may be silently updated on occasion by some combination of entities including Samsung, your carrier (for carrier branded devices) or even an enterprise organization that has activated other control features of Knox on a particular device. It may be a borked recent update by Samsung to the Security Policy database that is causing the erroneous behavior that is bugging many (but not all) of us.

Edit: as the immediately previous poster has correctly surmised, it may be effective to identify whatever app on your device is causing the Knox warning to trip and to uninstall that app and force Knox to rebuild its data and cache. This is treating the symptom and not the disease, of course, but it may provide relief until we've got a real fix.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[mhunter6378]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

There really seems to be no common theme to why these Knox notifications are occurring, at least that I have seen. I'm on AT&T and mine does not have the Knox app but as been pointed out, does have the Knox subsystem components. I've had my phone for 2 1/2 weeks and today got my first Knox notification, in fact I have gotten two of them. I have made no changes to the phone, have not turned off wifi (I never turn it off), have not installed any new apps in over a week and over the last two days have only used the phone for calls, texts and email. The first notification was waiting for me when I woke up this morning, the phone was on charge and not in use prior to the notification. The "only" thing that has changed on my phone in the last 24hours were 6 app updates (direct tv, flipboard, mx player, google play music, google earth and samsung watch on). This whole Knox notification thing is just weird.

 

[TJCacher]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

There really seems to be no common theme to why these Knox notifications are occurring, at least that I have seen. I'm on AT&T and mine does not have the Knox app but as been pointed out, does have the Knox subsystem components. I've had my phone for 2 1/2 weeks and today got my first Knox notification, in fact I have gotten two of them. I have made no changes to the phone, have not turned off wifi (I never turn it off), have not installed any new apps in over a week and over the last two days have only used the phone for calls, texts and email. The first notification was waiting for me when I woke up this morning, the phone was on charge and not in use prior to the notification. The "only" thing that has changed on my phone in the last 24hours were 6 app updates (direct tv, flipboard, mx player, google play music, google earth and samsung watch on). This whole Knox notification thing is just weird.

Agreed about the weird part. I am not sure you can depend on the fact that you don't ever explicitly disable Wi-Fi. When you sleep your phone the Wi-Fi radio may be turned off by the os itself. Therefore if you are getting the Knox system error after waking your phone, it may still be due to the erroneous Knox system error message related to the Wi-Fi problem.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[fantom305]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

Agreed about the weird part. I am not sure you can depend on the fact that you don't ever explicitly disable Wi-Fi. When you sleep your phone the Wi-Fi radio may be turned off by the os itself. Therefore if you are getting the Knox system error after waking your phone, it may still be due to the erroneous Knox system error message related to the Wi-Fi problem.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Well if that was to be the problem, one can easily fix that by going into the wifi settings the tick where it says "KEEP WIFI ON WHILE PHONE SLEEP".....So what I am trying to say is that I was getting the error with wifi and without wifi on .. The only thing I noticed that had worked for me is that after clearing the cache and data from KNOX and activating LOOKOUT, I haven't had any error for about two days .......... so take it for what is worth.......

 

[c1971ace]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

I just started having this PI pop up last night,oddly after i noticed the grey Google Settings icon. Not only do i have this but now everytime i touch my home button while im either in an app or in my app drawer i get this......completely stock not rooted. Def some kind of update fubard something and caused this to start happening.

 

[Lisablue33]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

Started today,not rooted,on tmobile, hope it's fixed soon...

Sent from my SM-N900T using AC Forums mobile app

 

[c1971ace]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

Oh and also now my battery life has a noticeable decrease now too.....

 

[misakomicky]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

i also have this problem and it happen 3 days already. it quit disturbing because it make me worry all time. what happen if one day it crash and all information are missing.. T___T is there any solution yet?

 

[mrwallyy]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

I've been on the forums for a while, I've seen this thread and always thought to myself "don't click it, it'll bring bad luck." Although I never clicked to read it, today the message appeared. I went through all six pages to try different suggestions, and none worked. Clearing the data is the only thing that stops it from coming back, until you restart your phone. I have the Sprint model. I'll definitely be adding my voice to the thread on Sprint's website.

It's sort of comforting though that everyone's having the same problem, this way they'll actually do something about it!

 

[CODRAGONJR]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

Anyone else who is experiencing this have a GEAR connected? It seems to go away when I have bluetooth disabled and my watch is not connected.

#QPRD

 

[fantom305]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

Anyone else who is experiencing this have a GEAR connected? It seems to go away when I have bluetooth disabled and my watch is not connected.

#QPRD

No gear here..............

 

[Lisablue33]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

No Gear. I did update Chrome right before I started getting the message, uninstalled update & hasn't happened since...even when toggling wifi on/off,which triggered it.

Sent from my SM-N900T using AC Forums mobile app

 

[c1971ace]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

Nope no gear here....lets face it its something to do with Knox. Sammy has to come up with a fix thats the only way it will stop.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[All4Galaxy]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

My phone was fine until I was admitted into hospital the other day and was bored so I opened s health with no wifi,then closed it. Now I get the message. So I am convinced it is s health related as it was only thing I touched that day. I am in hospital on painkillers...So I hope this makes some sense. Lol. Best of luck to fellow Sammy owners.

 

[tnerb123]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

I believe the issue with with Samsung Hub. Knox is bombing on it because samsung released an update that now makes this not supported on the Note 3 or S4. Samsung needs to update there app to be supported or allow us to disable this app in order to fix the issue.

 

[ioannisgk]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

I disagree. I think the issue is with the recent Google Setting update. But it doesnt matter. We are all waiting for a fix...

Sent from my SM-N9005

 

[Kegman]

Re: Samsung Note 3 "Prevention Information" Message

How did you guys turn off Knox? It just reinstall itself if I do. When you open Knox, it asks me to install it which I've never done. It's off in administrators and I get this message.

I'm suspicious that this was hidden update that screwed everything up