Bad headline
Unremovable Spyware on Samsung Devices Comes Pre-installed on Galaxy Series Devices
Submitted 4 months ago by Domino@quokk.au to technology@lemmy.world
https://cybersecuritynews.com/spyware-on-samsung-devices/amp/
Comments
sturmblast@lemmy.world 4 months ago
azha@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Hey I’m from middle east and yes I know about this, ironSource is an Israeli company, I personally don’t mind where its from but the fact that it collects user data is not so nice. I use Galaxy A53 and I slapped a GSI on it, I am using a degoogled version of android 16 and away from Samsung stuff been daily driving it for 5 months now works great, calls working, SMS works, camera works, NFC works, bank apps do not work. Thats it
hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Hello from GrapheneOS 👋
Tech savvy Lemmings don’t need SwapMyOS, but for more non-technical folk, it’s there just in case by demand.
AMA.
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 4 months ago
I wish I could install GrapheneOS on my Samsung… fuck it. I cannot wait for this shit to be paid off and I can get a GrapheneOS compatible phone.
Fuck Samsung in the ass.
hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world 4 months ago
One of my ideas for increasing GrapheneOS market share is to market GOS as the minimalist phone so many crave.
FWIW, GrapheneOS is in talks with phone manufacturers to also reduce/remove reliance on Google Pixels.
Also: You can technically put GOS on some non-Pixel devices, but it’s not officially supported (and thus not recommended). Just FYI.
stebator@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but GrapheneOS is designed to prevent users from gaining root (admin) privileges. Consequently, even if the device is compromised, you will never be aware of it. I don’t care about the moronic reasons behind this; this is my device, and it should be under my control.
Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I have yet to purchase a Samsung mobile phone and I will do my best to keep it that way.
Rooster326@programming.dev 4 months ago
I made the mistake one time. Idk why people speak so highly of them. What is wrong with them?
It got forced updates at Random hours of the day with no even pretend consent of “Not right now. I’m literally on a phone call”. All the update was to install Candy crush or Facebook. Again
I literally lost out on a job because it shut off to update while I was on a phone interview. Called back and the guy was rude af.
keyez@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Did you get the phone from a carrier? I’ve had 2 Samsung’s both bought unlocked from samsung and those come with no bloatware and for years I never had anything like that happen. My wife has an S23 from TMobile and has lots of unremovable apps and bloat.
hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
The software in question, AppCloud, developed by the mobile analytics firm IronSource, has been embedded in devices sold primarily in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
So if you’re not in the Middle East. You’re good. Still not going to buy any Samsung devices.
peetabix@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Don’t buy any Samsung devices, got it.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 4 months ago
But what options are there for non tech savvy people. Apple isn’t any better.
Alchalide@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Pixels are just bad hardware. 3 models got software updates that destroy battery life and more issues. No DAC ever worked properly on my 6a. They did gave me $100 for replacing the battery but I just bought, but I bought an s25. The Samsung has great hardware, software is less good than the pixel.
Bahnd@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Fairphone or a Google Pixle (optional GraphenOS, ive had non-tech people install it with no issues)
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
I’ve got a Motorola, it probably still has spyware but at least it’s cheap, durable, and has a decent battery.
GaryGhost@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I hate galaxy phones, they’re build quality is so shitty and the prices are higher than a google pixel. Now they come with Israeli spyware? What other phones have spyware that I should know about?
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I can’t imagine the pixel is much better. I think the question you have should be inverted. What doesn’t have spyware…
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I believe the FairPhone is pretty solid.
sleen@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
With the past decades or so a phone has become a standard piece of equipment where it’s virtually used everywhere, anytime. It is a complete disaster that those standards are not applied to what’s deemed under the hood - all these companies are deemed to do anything they want to because nothing is standard.
Look where that got us - a duopoly where going against them is deemed “inescapable”. It is disappointing how we even let this happen in the first place, the capitalists and fascists basically own us because of it.
All that got us is a standard thing tacked together by mystery tape and glue - hardware & software. Open source software and standards have barely any say here just because the fascists in rule decided so.
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
I’ve tried living without a mobile phone.
It makes life needlessly difficult. Doing anything requires getting through layers of “why don’t you have a phone”
I looked into getting a landline installed in my home. The guy at the phone store said land lines aren’t a thing anymore and showed me the fucking modem they’d be using for my “land line”
Something is deeply wrong.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
I mean here you can still get an LTE box and connect old phones to them. Or ooma which is voip
zaki_ft@lemmings.world 4 months ago
This is Israeli spyware.
They own you.
atmorous@lemmy.world 4 months ago
We need new OEM’s made. Seriously we can’t keep going like this. Any other good alternatives?
SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today 4 months ago
Problem is that Samsung is like Apple- a shitton of people just blindly buy the latest Samsung whatever with zero research.
So you have a bunch of other companies trying to stand out in one way or another- Motorola for example just released a phone that brings back the 3.5mm headphone jack. And you have a ton of cheap Chinese companies that may or may not offer any software support after purchase but have interesting form factors.That makes it hard for the little guys to get the kind of sales volume needed to justify the development and tooling for a really cool flagship phone.
Personally while phones today are far more capable, I think phone designs peaked in the mid 2000s. Mainly because you had actual innovation in design– wildly different form factors. There were a few phones that flipped open like a laptop with a physical keyboard, a handful that slid open to reveal a blackberry-style keyboard, many had SDIO ports or other ability to clip on expansion modules, etc. Phones had fun features- there was one that could do an early ‘google pay’ type thing by pulsing a magnetic field to pretend to be a magnetic credit card stripe for a swipe reader. A lot of the early Samsung phones had IR blasters so you could turn TVs on and off. There were a couple designed for gaming that were laid out like a game pad. Manufacturers weren’t afraid to experiment and the result was some really cool stuff.
Sadly that’s all gone today. HTC (which made many of those cool phones) was driven out of the market by Apple and Samsung, so now virtually all phones are identical flat bricks.
I see a glimmer of hope with flip phones and foldables, but not much. They’re all just excuses toatmorous@lemmy.world 4 months ago
So in a way its more educating people on better options rather than brand loyalty for an inferior product, hige various marketing to get smaller competitors to be seen, and those products sound awesome so innovations like that would pair well with marketing pushes (Community assistance would go a long way for marketimg).
Will look into the ones you suggested thanks
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Zionist Spyware
The bullshit propaganda is strong in this article.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 4 months ago
first time learning Unity owns ironsource.
well ig i may start avoiding games made in Unity.kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
Its always the Zionists they see land, life, freedom, and people as something to be bought and sold.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
Cloudflare down
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 4 months ago
I hope that we someday have a Linux-based Steam Whistle from Valve, so that we have a phone that is actually ours.
Soup@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I hope that one day we fix our bullshit and stop relying on corporations to save us. This should should be regulated to hell and back by representatives and their teams who are at worst just mediocre at their jobs.
While we’re dreaming and all that I’m gunna high ball it.
shani66@ani.social 4 months ago
I’d absolutely move to a steam machine in my pocket.
bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Gaben deserves a 14th yacht if he makes this ;)
atmorous@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Let’s not wait. Let’s collectively ask Valve to make that next
Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
When my Graphene’d Pixel 7 goes out of support I’m switching to something Linux based even if I have to get a Raspberry Pi and a case and carry around a brick. My handbag’s big enough.
rumba@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
I REALLY wanted to do a pi phone, and while it’s very possible to make a working phone/tablet out of one, their power consumption is absolutely awful. Most of the linux capable SBC’s can’t do low power.
I want an 8" linux touch screen with 18h of moderate usage batter life, I’m even willing to carry around a separate 4g access point.
Integrate777@discuss.online 4 months ago
CM5s have 16GB of ram, some people might be building a postmarket os port for it too. Just need someone to design phone hardware for it.
Estebiu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Furi’s FLX1s seems like a valid alternative.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 4 months ago
PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Kinda funny that for all the downsides, the one that made me say oof was resistive touch.
MourningDove@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Remember when Apple was the bad guy?
Redredme@lemmy.world 4 months ago
if you really believe Tim Apple isn’t doing the same shit only a Little bit smarter so its les obvious then I’m sorry to wake you from your dream but:
All big tech is bad. Apple. Microsoft. Oracle. Meta. Snap. IBM. Digital Ocean. Amazon. Etc.
There are no good guys. Only bad and worse. Its not the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s the bad (Apple), the really bad (Microsoft and most of the rest) and the obnoxiously bad. (Special place in hell for Meta, TikTok and Google)
MourningDove@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
I’ll believe it when the proof is as strong as what Google is doing. I don’t base my anger on assumptions.
Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
There can be more than one bad guy.
InFerNo@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
They stopped?
livingcoder@programming.dev 4 months ago
I will never buy another Samsung phone or tablet. I was done the moment I started getting notification ads from the Samsung store that I cannot disable.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 4 months ago
I will never buy another Samsung phone or tablet.
Same
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
You can mostly disable them. Delete your Samsung account, don’t agree to their terms of service besides the most basic one or two that is required. No defense of Samsung, just what I did to deny them as much as I could of my information until I replace this phone and never buy Samsung again.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 4 months ago
my Samsung account got banned anyways because i unlocked my bootloader lol.
dvlsg@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I used to only buy Samsung phones.
Now they’re the only phone I’ve ever returned. Never touching their shit again.
Scavenger_Solardaddy@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
This happened to me with my Xiaomi, I get notification ads from Xiaomi GetApp, their own app store. They even force open overriding google play when I press update on a third party app. I tried to block and force stop but they still pop up. I got so fed up I blocked them from using data and wifi; that did the trick.
TrumpetX@programming.dev 4 months ago
This is me. As I write to you from my Graphene Pixel 9. My first non Samsung phone since the S3. The S22 unwanted ads were just too much. (and apparently it’s all worse now) You could disable them, but you had to re disable after every update. The second I found a good deal on a pixel I jumped.
vaionko@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
I had a Note 20. A week ago I got an Xperia 5 II for 70€ and installed LineageOS and it’s so much faster than the Samsung. Decent Pixels are a quite expensive here so no Graphene for me
artyom@piefed.social 4 months ago
Alwayshasbeen.jpg
11111one11111@lemmy.world 4 months ago
There is a reason quartebacks don’t return kicks and linebackers dont play wide receiver. They followed their natural genetic build and skillset to become the best at what they are built to do.
Samsung has been a fuckin train wreck with every single piece of fuckin software they touch. They used to make amazing hardware products and I was their #1 fan 20 years ago. Then they started embedding software in every cunthole they can shove their tiny dicks into and first I stopped buying their TV because the volume button on the remotes hat an embedded feature that when pressed down/in instead of up or down (like the sticks on video game contorll3rs) it backed you out of fuckin everything and launched the fuckin atrocious built in samsung broadcasted tv. Not cable, not anything you plug in or choose. No it takes you to a tv broadcasts only shows that noone will pay to watch. Then it was laptops then its now about to be my fuckin ZFold-5 that AGAIN is the best piece of mobile hardware ive ever owned. Indestructible, blazing fast typing speed with full qwerty keyboards like the good Ole cellphone days, beautiful display, beautiful cameras. It really is my favorite thing ive ever had ruined. They just facefuck shitty software onto of shitty software into everything they can. I MEAN PERFECT EXAMPLE AND TIME TO STOP WAS WHEN EVERYONE SAID FUCK YOU TO THEM MAKING FUCKBOOK A BUILT IN APP. Fuck samsung right in their fucking fuck hole
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Now tell us how you really feel… actually, maybe don’t. :)
11111one11111@lemmy.world 4 months ago
This, normally, is where I Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssstaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrttttttttttt inhaling deeply, while glaring maniacally down my nose at my audience of toddler aged nieces and nephews all taking cover from th3 eruption they knows coming🤓🤯🤠🫤😨🥹😱
But naaaaaaaa this is the waaay more laid mat me who only twitches their eyelids while grinding my teeth when someone tells me to simmer down🤣
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
I’m a pretty big fan of using fuck, but holy fuck, that was a lot. I wonder why you feel that passionately about it?
I deleted my Samsung account when an update about 6 months ago came along that basically wanted ALL your personal data so you could use AI for photo search, etc. Then I found out about all the other minor things they insist you have an account to use. So, yeah, Fuck Samsung! Now I need to find a phone I can live with to replace it when it stops working.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I had an A5 a while back and samsung didn’t make me hate them so the next phone I got was an s10. On that phone, they decided that they needed to dedicate a physical button to their fucking virtual assistant bixby. It was pretty obvious to me that these virtual assistants were mostly actually data vacuums, wanting to integrate into every aspect of your life so they can access better data on all those aspects.
Every single time it opened that fucking thing, it was unintentional. It wasn’t as annoying as your TV, since I bet the phone was way faster and had enough memory to not have to discard whatever else you were doing just to open its app, but it exemplifies how I see samsung today. Hardware had great specs but the software made it annoying by trying to lock everything in to their ecosystem without a hard lock like apple. Even MS had ways of disabling the windows button (which used to have a high chance of crashing a game if you accidentally hit it).
jjlinux@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Yeah, I’m angry at them too.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 4 months ago
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 4 months ago
Samsung Fold this 👊🏼
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
👏👏👏👏👏
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 4 months ago
First sentence:
Samsung has been accused of shipping budget Galaxy A and M series smartphones with pre-installed spyware that users can’t easily remove.
So unremovable in the sense that it can be removed.
Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
I took the jump and installed GrapheneOS on my Pixel 9 this weekend. Easiest alternate OS load I’ve ever done, didn’t even need to see a command line. (I’ve put LineageOS on many a phone and GrapheneOS’s web-based installer is amazing).
Loving it so far. I have three profiles, the main ‘Owner’ with NO google services/app store at all; and two more ‘Personal’ and ‘Work’ profiles that have Google stuff.
Amazingly GrapheneOS even lets you deny Google App Store itself permissions to install from untrusted sources (in this case, Google App Store itself) – I was suprised to see installing just App Store triggered attempts to then load: My Pixel, Google Photos, Fitbit(!!? WTF), and a few others, without any confirmation first. Was able to shut that shit down immediately.
I hope GrapheneOS spreads to other phone models. And I’m sure Google has a team planning on how to strangle it before it does…
jankforlife@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
Is anyone really surprised one of the biggest companies in occupied korea would do this??
A_A@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel, again, is pushing for this :
The software in question, AppCloud, developed by the mobile analytics firm IronSource, has been embedded in devices sold primarily in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
pir8t0x@ani.social 4 months ago
If you’re talking about “AppCloud” here, I already deleted that through Canta a while ago