The green dot on your Samsung phone is a privacy indicator, not a notification badge or a glitch.
When any app opens your camera or activates your microphone, a small green circle appears in the top-right corner of the display. It stays lit for as long as the access is active. Swiping down into the notification shade while the dot is visible shows which app triggered it — useful if the culprit is not the one you expect. The indicator is built into Android's privacy controls and is present on Samsung devices running Android 12 and later.
The feature matters because it makes invisible sensor access visible. Before these indicators existed, apps could silently open your camera or listen via the microphone with no on-screen signal to alert you. Apple introduced a similar system in iOS 14 — orange for microphone, green for camera — and Google followed suit with Android 12, making the indicator standard on both major mobile platforms.
Both platforms have had these controls for years. The fact that they still require explanation is less a knock on users than on the companies that buried the feature in release notes instead of surfacing it the first time it fired.