Yet another reason why running GrapheneOS is a great idea. The surveillance state is now.

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.

Thank you Samsung for giving us, not one, but two reasons this week to not buy your overpriced shit.

It's fine, they'll still be able to change the OS

https://sammyguru.com/breaking-samsung-removes-bootloader-unlocking-with-one-ui-8/

Oh...

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?

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.

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.

Once again: Fuck Samsung and fuck Israel.

Israel... aren't those the guys that put bombs in the pagers?

One more example why big corporations are not your friends

Incredible. We have reached the point where it feels safer buying a random Chinese phone than Samsung or other "big brands".

Shame that Samsung is the top selling Android vendor. I wasn't aware of this when I went with Honor but I'm glad I did.

It's worth noting that as of 2022, Unity owns 73.5% of the company IronSource, which develops the spy/"intrusive bloatware" app

GrapheneOS with their real phone cant come soon enough. These big tech companies have ruined any sense of ownership.

Another reason to stop using Samsung smh. The Devil army of Israel keeps showing it is the ultimate evil

Samsung phone might be dangerous to your health and life, even in a case of being near oen. Even if you aren't conspiring to send aid to Gaza, since they can probably also track people around you. Andd they do kill based on metadata. US and Israel, both.

At times like these I really want to just buy a spare burner flip phones.. no additional use cases need. Dial/call in and out..

After everything that has happened in the past 2 years, that entire region should entirely boycott Samsung until they're clear all Israeli spyware is cleared out of phones. The Middle East is a fairly large Market and everything Samsung should be forbidden entry by leaders of those countries until this is fixed.

There are reports of people noticing it two years ago.

Fuck you Samsung, and Fuck the IOF. sincerely MENA

I don’t think cell phone batteries can be wired to explode, but I am not an electrical engineer.

Samsungs Ai obsession seems way more aggressive than the pixels

Can we introduce them to Meshtastic?

Someone in another thread pointed out that reddit users spotted this two gears ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/1505mzb/what_on_earth_is_ironsource/

All that talk of Knox security and Bootloader locking just to install a system level spyware.

And that's one more reason why hard- and software not fully under the users control is completely worthless.

What did i expect?