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Things are going too far. FB, Gmail, Google & many more are famous for taking your data & doing wth they want with it (aka selling it on to all & sundry), but now this...?

https://twitter.com/0xUID/status/728538189242191872

"What is Samsung SSD Magician?

The “Samsung SSD Magician” software facilitates easy maintenance and use of Samsung SSD products connected to a desktop or notebook computer."

Welp (for those that didn`t see the Twitter link...)

If you do not agree to Samsung collecting & using any personal data however they want, now you will no longer be allowed updates to the firmware, meaning you could be at any security risk or your hardware could too. Or even possibly end up with something bricked to any extent, just like Asus after Microshaft sent out new updates.

There are alternatives, but of course, not having the direct access to everything that Samsung does (hardware/builds etc) they may not be as good...
Alternative brand, proxy, offline, never update... etc. Lots of options. Let the idiots die on the vine. Let the market decide.
Are you sure this isn't simply a legally necessary agreement to cover what the software actually does? If you look at most agreements it's like they intend to publicly destroy you and sell your data to ISIS for fake passports etc. But in reality most companies don't do this (some do, I know. But I doubt Samsung is one of them).
While I can see why it may want to know your HDDs IDs to help get the right set-up for the software/hardware, there is no reason at all they should be sniffing around your IP.[i][/i]

In order to provide Samsung Magician to you, to authenticate you and your device(s, and to provide other services related to your use of Samsung Magician), we need to collect information on you and the device through software on your device. For example, we may collect information including your IP address, the serial numbers and device IDs of the devices you use in connection with Samsung Magician, the number of drivers installed on your PC or device used to access Samsung Magician.

Plus, if they needed to do this for the software/hardware benefit, it would`ve been in all previous versions, but it is new to the latest one only.

Also reminds me of a warning a while ago, about Samsung TVs, saying "don`t talk about anything personal/sensitive near them, because....

"Samsung says it needs to send your voice commands to a third-party, because that company converts your speech to text. But Samsung also collects your voice commands to perform research and determine whether it needs to make improvements to the feature. "

Needs to send all recordings to a third party? Voice recognition can be stuck on a tiny chip or in software, no need at all for sending it over internets etc...
Post edited May 07, 2016 by fishbaits
funny that u said "gmail and google", there both google shits lol

anyway the governments spys,NSA,etc, i heard Microsoft said if they were gonna use your data like so, they will let u know unlike the rest, throwing your data about without u knowing
So agree. Install firmware, then uninstall the app. No data collection possible.

If you are worried about them scanning entire system, then no firmware update I guess.
Post edited May 08, 2016 by qwixter
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fishbaits: In order to provide Samsung Magician to you, to authenticate you and your device(s, and to provide other services related to your use of Samsung Magician), we need to collect information on you and the device through software on your device. For example, we may collect information including your IP address, the serial numbers and device IDs of the devices you use in connection with Samsung Magician, the number of drivers installed on your PC or device used to access Samsung Magician.
The way these companies word that is, to me, very disingenuous. And no one ever seems to call them out on it.

What I'm talking about is they say, basically, "We might collect ANYTHING WE WANT - REALLY - ANYTHING - but here's a few relatively benign examples of what we might collect. But remember, we said ANYTHING, including these examples.."

That's what the words, "We may collect information including.."

They aren't EXCLUDING anything.

Facebook Oculus has the same bullshit (as do so many others - this is just another recent example):

Depending on which Services you use, we collect different kinds of information from or about you, such as...
Nothing there says "limited to", it says "such as", which leaves the door WIDE OPEN for ANYTHING.

No one ever calls out this crap anymore - guess we're all just numbed to it anymore.
Root your phone and install CyanogenMod.
https://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/About

Get rid of uninstallable bloatware and decide which apps can access your private information. You can even push fake information if some apps require that info to work.

Edit: Do not confuse CyanogenMod with Cyanogen OS, the former is a community driven project the latter is a company developed software which integrate microsoft cortana and stuff into the OS.
Post edited May 08, 2016 by Gnostic
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Martek: Facebook Oculus has the same bullshit (as do so many others - this is just another recent example):
I remember when the shit hit the fan when FB first bought Oculus, all those that backed were suspect about it.
Then when he pulled this stunt, even more so & rightly so.

There is no reason at all why they need to collect all of that when you`re using the thing, other than to sell it on, of course...
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Gnostic: Root your phone and install CyanogenMod.
https://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/About

Get rid of uninstallable bloatware and decide which apps can access your private information. You can even push fake information if some apps require that info to work.

Edit: Do not confuse CyanogenMod with Cyanogen OS, the former is a community driven project the latter is a company developed software which integrate microsoft cortana and stuff into the OS.
I`m still having to wait for one that`ll work on my mobille (Meizu MX5) or when the MX6 comes out, which will have the Ubuntu version that (should?) work on mine.

Someone I know locally grabbed the CyanogenMod version & said it is amazing how much crap it got rid of & how much faster his phone is now.
Post edited May 08, 2016 by fishbaits
BLOCK - ALL - THE - OUTGOING/INGOING - CONNECTIONS!

(to scream in meme-style)
Post edited May 08, 2016 by KingofGnG
Blocking incoming/outgoing streams isn't really going to solve this, though.

But yeah, pretty much all license agreements for software, made by companies that have their accounting department in the US, that involves storing any amount of personal details, will have a type of catch-all legalese that in the most extreme circumstances can be used to collect your files, e-mail contacts, any snooped data, etc.. And then legally have this sold to 3rd party marketing efforts.

Valve was actually caught doing this with the steam profiles, that still store your address, real name, etc., on their servers. Sony did the same thing with the psn accounts - sold lists of e-mail addresses to relevant location based marketing services, based on whether that user had used their credit card online. Very useful data for marketing, obviously, to know that they can reach someone who use their credit card online.

Meanwhile, both Valve and Sony had each of their runins with what they blame on hacking, when they lost potentially a lot of personal information, or allowed personal information they had not explicitly been telling customers they were storing on their servers, into the public domain. Valve has actually had several of these, and got threatened from several independent parties at the same time with lawsuits, based on common EU law. Like the one Sony was found guilty of breaking in the UK, for negligence, a while back.

Valve answered by dissolving their Luxembourg office to avoid reprisals under EU laws. Rather than change their practices to conform with standards that any online store in the EU region can manage to do in a couple of days - it's very simple stuff that doesn't cost much to do at all, or that you can fix on your own.

But it would have required valve to give up their online account storage with the information they store on their servers based on user-ids. And they're not willing to do that, presumably because they still use this information and sell it. There's.. no other reasonable explanation for it. Basically, they were willing to give up the tax-haven Luxembourg was for their entire EU market in order to avoid having to be more deliberate when storing user-information online. So you kind of run out of reasons for why they would do that, other than that this information is very lucrative. Note that it's still possible to have the entire "one-click purchase" thing while conforming to protection standards for personal information..

EA and Activision, just as UBIsoft, have their own services like this as well - and also have this weird catch-all user-agreement. Sony still have that user-agreement for their UK and EU users, although it's not legally considered binding. If you remember the entire hoopla with the firmware a while back, they actually had their users run around having to specifically sign on if they were not going to implicitly accept the user-agreement as "binding", for example. It was literally a legal wrangling to avoid being sued for damages by individual users in case they screwed up. And they were really willing to engage their entire legal department to sue Geohot(who didn't even actually hack the firmware - he just made the method irreversibly "public") out of his allowance money.

So yeah. It's an established practice nowadays to immunize the company from faults or errors they might make, even if they're not actually snooping your personal home-folder, like the Origin app is (i.e., they still collect all your registry entries and savefile locations, to detect what games you have installed - very useful, I suppose, for figuring out how many games you buy on Origin compared to other platforms). And in the absence of deliberate and specific cyberspace laws, a lot of the buyer and personal data protection you take for granted in any other business transaction, this kind of all-purpose caveat really is what is the operative law.

You might lose your stored bank account numbers, your passwords and email, some of your purchases, your age and address, real name, etc. And there's really nothing you can do unless the company has an accounting office in the UK or in the EU, and the damage can be documented as being substantial and systemic, and so resulting from negligence to implement common safety standards. Which, of course, their legal departments will dispute until the end of time - like Sony still are, even after being forced to pay substantial fines for failing to protect their users' data..
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Martek: Facebook Oculus has the same bullshit (as do so many others - this is just another recent example):
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fishbaits: I remember when the shit hit the fan when FB first bought Oculus, all those that backed were suspect about it.
Then when he pulled this stunt, even more so & rightly so.

There is no reason at all why they need to collect all of that when you`re using the thing, other than to sell it on, of course...
avatar
Gnostic: Root your phone and install CyanogenMod.
https://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/About

Get rid of uninstallable bloatware and decide which apps can access your private information. You can even push fake information if some apps require that info to work.

Edit: Do not confuse CyanogenMod with Cyanogen OS, the former is a community driven project the latter is a company developed software which integrate microsoft cortana and stuff into the OS.
avatar
fishbaits: I`m still having to wait for one that`ll work on my mobille (Meizu MX5) or when the MX6 comes out, which will have the Ubuntu version that (should?) work on mine.

Someone I know locally grabbed the CyanogenMod version & said it is amazing how much crap it got rid of & how much faster his phone is now.
Nowadays apps have really ridiculous permission requirement. Why a app that help me read books want access to my location and SMS among other things that does not make sense? Unless they want to sell information to advertisements.

At least I can block this unreasonable access with CM privacy guard.
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fishbaits: In order to provide Samsung Magician to you, to authenticate you and your device(s, and to provide other services related to your use of Samsung Magician), we need to collect information on you and the device through software on your device. For example, we may collect information including your IP address, the serial numbers and device IDs of the devices you use in connection with Samsung Magician, the number of drivers installed on your PC or device used to access Samsung Magician.
avatar
Martek: The way these companies word that is, to me, very disingenuous. And no one ever seems to call them out on it.

What I'm talking about is they say, basically, "We might collect ANYTHING WE WANT - REALLY - ANYTHING - but here's a few relatively benign examples of what we might collect. But remember, we said ANYTHING, including these examples.."

That's what the words, "We may collect information including.."

They aren't EXCLUDING anything.

Facebook Oculus has the same bullshit (as do so many others - this is just another recent example):

Depending on which Services you use, we collect different kinds of information from or about you, such as...
avatar
Martek: Nothing there says "limited to", it says "such as", which leaves the door WIDE OPEN for ANYTHING.

No one ever calls out this crap anymore - guess we're all just numbed to it anymore.
U hit the nail on the head, most ppl dun read the entire ToS & some dun bother to even see it before downloading & using an app nowadays. It's pretty much the same for smartphone users. Unfortunately, this is just a small part of the prob. The REAL prob as u rightly pointed out is TOO MANY if not all of these companies that develops the apps or softwares requires (or shd i say, demand) that we give up our rights to privacy & to indemify them from being sued if they ever screwed up. Such as by not protecting/securing the info they obtained from us 'legally' or selling/releasing them to 3rd-party w/o our explict consent.

What's worse is the apps or software sometimes even forces us to give them permission to access our private data on our computers, laptops &/or smartphones even though they do not & hv absolutely no reason or requirements to do so before we are allowed to use them. Now, these conapnies wld say in their defence that if we dun agree to any of those conditions we can always not use them but the fact is so many of us are dependent on using these apps & softwares (such as MS Win, Ofc, Whatsapp & so on) that not using them & choosing to use an alternative instead does not seem to be a viable choice.

While i understand the need for these companies to also protect their interests, i believe it is also our (the comsume's) preogative to NOT be coerced into using ANY apps & softwares that does anything OTHER THAN what is absolutely necessary. If these companies require additional data from us from some reason or another, we shd remain our right to give them consent or otherwise.

The sad fact is unless the Govt is willing to step in to enact this into law, there is no way the companies themselves will enforce such ruling. We can only hope that one day it will happen but as of now it remains but a pipe dream. :(
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tomyam80: The sad fact is unless the Govt is willing to step in to enact this into law, there is no way the companies themselves will enforce such ruling. We can only hope that one day it will happen but as of now it remains but a pipe dream. :(
I guess the different companies would, if users were clear about their purchase preferences. And in practice you won't get legislation through any parliament unless it can be convincingly argued to benefit businesses directly anyway. I.e., see: "in an answer to customer dissatisfaction", at best. A phrase often used in reports from consulting firms when introducing legislation that encourages and at least makes it appear that concerns are taken care of, but often mandate very little actual change in practices.

The problem is that most.. all, probably... businesses (including companies that sell games :p, for example) have caught on to that the businesses with the highest customer satisfaction and retention rating are the companies that don't necessarily sell the best product, or what ultimately is the best tool, etc., but those who have the most conform and predictable sales-pitch. It's a well-known phenomenon that cutting out features that might be useful, and focusing on less frills and extras, for example, makes the product an easier sell - and therefore objectively have more appeal (statistically speaking).

More practically - the less details the customer is introduced to, the more genuine they believe the sales-pitch is (statistically speaking). It's "brand confidence" building 101, and it's something you have to think about.

And in that respect, selling something that encourages you to be critical, learn what the product is, and consider carefully what you actually need, while showing lots and lots of technical details - this is counterintuitive. For example: do you want to buy an ssd with a very high instruction queue-depth, RAM transfer speeds scaled for the maximum sata3 rate, along with a controller that is deliberately programmed to maximize parallel read and write efficiency over theoretical peak performance for single 4 Gb+ files? Or do you want to buy something that "makes your daily tasks easier"? Do you want something that "conforms to all security and access restriction standards to allow yourself immunity from potential abuse" by this very company that's selling you the product - or do you want "the most modern encryption suite and cloud service available". Etc.

It's the same thing. A company doesn't need or want to cater to special public interests. You would think that there's a synergy here, though - that specialist concerns would guide the market somehow. In the same way that companies striving to actually compete with others are interested in making the product technically better over time, while avoiding pitfalls that specific customers might run into. But it's not the case - what you want is a product that a large part of your customers are satisfied with to a very high degree. And if you can consistently avoid complicated things in your sales-pitch, and adjust the product towards that simple pitch - then it's been proven, over and over again, that the actual technical solution is almost irrelevant.

In fact, it's beneficial for many companies to ditch knowledgable and critical customers very deliberately. Because they are difficult to sell something new to, they are going to complain, and they will be unsatisfied if the product doesn't actually benefit them, rather than - say - help the company sell a very similar product to them every single year.

Specifically for Samsung, for example - they have sold a "consumer market" ssd line for a very long time now, and it's been popular basically because of the price. In the meantime, though - if Samsung wanted to, they could actually make new NAND and replace their very bad controller, increase the write speeds significantly, etc. - and actually produce that product for less money than what they are doing with their "first gen" tech, so to speak.

But differentiating out the low performance product as something cheaper than their premium product has worked brilliantly for a long while to get a portion of the market where people buy the most products. So even if they might actually earn more money by creating a better product and sell it for less money, they would likely be wary of giving up the "consumer-level" vs. "top performance premium" differentiation.

In the same way, an actually good product, like the Crucial ssds witht he marvell controller, and all of their reboots over the last couple of years, this competes in some way with a marginally cheaper and massively worse product technically -- but they do get suspicion from users for introducing new hardware, new controllers, and different NAND layouts. When that product is not significantly more expensive than the competition. I.e., that they have supreme technical expertise with their solution, and that they made the absolutely best product you could technically get into your computer at basically every single iteration (and then went on to specialize the products for different user-bases), is something that is seen with suspicion.

Basically, what happens is that they require of reviewers, and users, to learn too much about the products before pitching the appeal.

So yes. Companies know that most of you are lazy and easily coaxed. Until the point where you happily spend money on something that makes you subjectively fell better, rather than what might be thought to have the most utility. And you can't force people to change that approach via legislation in parliament. In fact, that's more "dangerous" than pitching niche-products in the private sector. Because at least some of those products do have a market.
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tomyam80: The sad fact is unless the Govt is willing to step in to enact this into law, there is no way the companies themselves will enforce such ruling. We can only hope that one day it will happen but as of now it remains but a pipe dream. :(
avatar
nipsen: I guess the different companies would, if users were clear about their purchase preferences. And in practice you won't get legislation through any parliament unless it can be convincingly argued to benefit businesses directly anyway. I.e., see: "in an answer to customer dissatisfaction", at best. A phrase often used in reports from consulting firms when introducing legislation that encourages and at least makes it appear that concerns are taken care of, but often mandate very little actual change in practices.

The problem is that most.. all, probably... businesses (including companies that sell games :p, for example) have caught on to that the businesses with the highest customer satisfaction and retention rating are the companies that don't necessarily sell the best product, or what ultimately is the best tool, etc., but those who have the most conform and predictable sales-pitch. It's a well-known phenomenon that cutting out features that might be useful, and focusing on less frills and extras, for example, makes the product an easier sell - and therefore objectively have more appeal (statistically speaking).

More practically - the less details the customer is introduced to, the more genuine they believe the sales-pitch is (statistically speaking). It's "brand confidence" building 101, and it's something you have to think about.

And in that respect, selling something that encourages you to be critical, learn what the product is, and consider carefully what you actually need, while showing lots and lots of technical details - this is counterintuitive. For example: do you want to buy an ssd with a very high instruction queue-depth, RAM transfer speeds scaled for the maximum sata3 rate, along with a controller that is deliberately programmed to maximize parallel read and write efficiency over theoretical peak performance for single 4 Gb+ files? Or do you want to buy something that "makes your daily tasks easier"? Do you want something that "conforms to all security and access restriction standards to allow yourself immunity from potential abuse" by this very company that's selling you the product - or do you want "the most modern encryption suite and cloud service available". Etc.

It's the same thing. A company doesn't need or want to cater to special public interests. You would think that there's a synergy here, though - that specialist concerns would guide the market somehow. In the same way that companies striving to actually compete with others are interested in making the product technically better over time, while avoiding pitfalls that specific customers might run into. But it's not the case - what you want is a product that a large part of your customers are satisfied with to a very high degree. And if you can consistently avoid complicated things in your sales-pitch, and adjust the product towards that simple pitch - then it's been proven, over and over again, that the actual technical solution is almost irrelevant.

In fact, it's beneficial for many companies to ditch knowledgable and critical customers very deliberately. Because they are difficult to sell something new to, they are going to complain, and they will be unsatisfied if the product doesn't actually benefit them, rather than - say - help the company sell a very similar product to them every single year.

Specifically for Samsung, for example - they have sold a "consumer market" ssd line for a very long time now, and it's been popular basically because of the price. In the meantime, though - if Samsung wanted to, they could actually make new NAND and replace their very bad controller, increase the write speeds significantly, etc. - and actually produce that product for less money than what they are doing with their "first gen" tech, so to speak.

But differentiating out the low performance product as something cheaper than their premium product has worked brilliantly for a long while to get a portion of the market where people buy the most products. So even if they might actually earn more money by creating a better product and sell it for less money, they would likely be wary of giving up the "consumer-level" vs. "top performance premium" differentiation.

In the same way, an actually good product, like the Crucial ssds witht he marvell controller, and all of their reboots over the last couple of years, this competes in some way with a marginally cheaper and massively worse product technically -- but they do get suspicion from users for introducing new hardware, new controllers, and different NAND layouts. When that product is not significantly more expensive than the competition. I.e., that they have supreme technical expertise with their solution, and that they made the absolutely best product you could technically get into your computer at basically every single iteration (and then went on to specialize the products for different user-bases), is something that is seen with suspicion.

Basically, what happens is that they require of reviewers, and users, to learn too much about the products before pitching the appeal.

So yes. Companies know that most of you are lazy and easily coaxed. Until the point where you happily spend money on something that makes you subjectively fell better, rather than what might be thought to have the most utility. And you can't force people to change that approach via legislation in parliament. In fact, that's more "dangerous" than pitching niche-products in the private sector. Because at least some of those products do have a market.
That's one hell long wall of text, pls cut to the point & summarize in future as no one likes to read such long replies.

Anyway, I beg to differ. Companies will almost never do anything which is against their interest in favour of the consumers & Govt will also never step in unless there is a gross & huge uproar by a massive amt of consumers that petition to have them enact into legislation.

As for your point that the less details the customer is introduced to, the more genuine they believe the sales-pitch is (statistically speaking), i can't comment as i dun have nor am i bothered to look up the stats. I can only say it dun apply to me. For me, the more a company is willing to divulge it's info & ToS on a product the more likely I will buy from them as it's shows honesty & transparency. Would u rather buy a product from a company simply attempts to hoodwink u by saying vaguely it gathers some sort of data (which could be ANYTHING & EVERYTHING) from u w/o explicitly knowing wat or from one that tells u exactly wat sort of data it gathers? I leave it to u to make ur own judgement.

Apologies but i'm not even gonna reply to the rest of ur Long Wall of Text as it does not pertain to wat i want to address.
Post edited May 16, 2016 by tomyam80