Samsung Embeds Israeli Surveillance App on Phones Across MENA

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2025/06/212144/samsung-embeds-israeli-surveillance-app-on-phones-across-mena/

Rabat_ Social Media Exchange (SMEX)—a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing human rights in digital spaces across MENA [Middle East and North Africa] — is warning that Israeli-linked software secretly embedded in Samsung phones across the Middle East and North Africa region poses a serious surveillance threat.

According to SMEX, Samsung’s A and M series devices either come preloaded with the app “Aura” or install it automatically through system updates, without the user’s consent. The application reportedly collects a wide range of personal and device-specific data, including IP addresses, device fingerprints, hardware details, and network information.

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Comments

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N0t_5ure@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yet another reason why running GrapheneOS is a great idea. The surveillance state is now.

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- TimboSlice@discuss.online ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Pixel only?
  
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  - N0t_5ure@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    yes, and you have to get one that is from google and isn’t from a carrier so you can unlock the bootloader. Carrier versions have locked bootloaders.
    
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  - Darkcoffee@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    In most markets, kind of. There are some others but most aren’t sold in NA other than the Pixel.
    
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6nk06@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s fine, they’ll still be able to change the OS

sammyguru.com/breaking-samsung-removes-bootloader…

Oh…

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SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Thank you Samsung for giving us, not one, but two reasons this week to not buy your overpriced shit.

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- answersplease77@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  whats the 2nd? beside their push ads, spying and unremovable overbloated junk?
  
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  - SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    They recently announced that they were going to insert ads on their smart fridges. What soured me towards Samsung products was when they started to lock the bootloader on their phones where previously this wasn’t a problem.
    
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cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I wonder what spyware they’d be willing to put in their phones in the US for the regime in charge.

Also, if I bought a Samsung phone while a dictator is in charge and it gets the update and I get the spyware — hypothetically speaking here — and by the time a progressive is in office, they’re pushing updates that remove it, but my phone is outside the update period, how would I go about removing it? Just buy a new one at cost? Seems like that’s something they’d let you do for free, though.

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ftmpch@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Has anyone actually analysed this app to see what information it can actually access? The few articles I’ve found don’t elaborate.

Like, does it just track what games you play and websites you visit? Or can it log your keyboard, steal all your banking passwords and read all your private conversations?

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- philosloppy@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  “is this runoff full of poop or just pee???”
  
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  - ftmpch@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Well, of course I don’t want either poop or pee in my phone, but it matters which one I have, because I need to know what cleaning products to use.
    
    If it’s poop, then maybe I need to change all my passwords and keep especially alerted for fraud, but if it’s only pee, then I only need to remove/disable the app and I can stop worrying about it.
    
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- drmoose@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  It’s a rage bait article that’s why they leave out all of the information. It’s working too.
  
  Seems like a popular Kuwait based e-commerce app in the region:
  
  play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alshaya…
  
  That being said android apps are sandboxed and dont really have any capabilities unless launched. Still shouldn’t be included by default but this is still rage bait.
  
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- missfrizzle@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  if anyone has one of these phones, please contact CitizenLab. they can reverse-engineer it.
  
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goodboyjojo@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
i have a samsung phone and im not surprised to hear this. my phone keeps installing these crappy mobile games without my consent and i had to manually uninstall them a few times. so yeah, not much of a stretch.

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- devedeset@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Could it be your carrier somehow doing that? I’ve literally never had that happen
  
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  - FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    it definitely is a carrier thing. my phone is carrier unlocked, but because it used to be a T-Mobile phone I still had their shitty T-Mobile app manager randomly installing shit. I was wise enough to disable it but many have no idea you can. same goes for this appcloud thing, it’s been around for a long time and affects a lot of Japanese and Chinese phones too. I switched from iPhone and this bewildered me, no idea how it’s even legal.
    
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vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
That’s why they say that free cheese exists only in traps.

(Or sometimes cheese paid for, but less than needed to not look for other sources of financing. Think all of modern electronics and the Internet.)

It’s not about other schemes of profiting than paying forward not existing - it’s about you the customer being interested in them not being used. They are always worse for you. The lesson of “free” stuff on the Internet.

Including free and open source software, with no doubt - because when a FOSS project could go the direction that would badly hurt corporate business relying on traps, it doesn’t - because its scheme of existence is based on said corporate businesses’ funding and developer participation and embrace and testing. And there won’t be a discussion inside that project, no matter how democratic, because money likes silence. Nobody will even think about a direction not supported by work, and work is done by people, and people are paid. All of big FOSS events cost a lot ; some of it is in volunteer resources, but most of it is people on their jobs.

I’m honestly starting to think about going the Apple way - at least they only send hashes of the binaries you run to the daddy.

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