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Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]
- literalAardvark 3y agoWell that's horrifying, can't wait for Samsung to disable my phone because I went on vacation to Cancun...
- iforgotpassword 3y agoThat was the first thing I wondered; how will they avoid this? Let's say I'm going there for an extended trip and decide to get a local SIM card. Will my phone just go poof?
- brookst 3y agoI think they avoid it by only targeting phones bought in one market but with first account setup and first SIM from another. So your exposure would be if you decided to factory reset the phone, use a new Samsung/Google account, and get a local SIM.
- daoboy 3y agoThat's messed up. I have generally preferred Samsung products,too. 10-15 years ago, when I had a lot more free time, I used to put CyanogenMod on my phones and play around with that. Are there any good open source mobile OS around these days?
- billfor 3y agoLineageOS replaced CyanogenMod. And don't buy a phone from Aliexpress in Mexico....
- CrazyPyroLinux 3y agoGrapheneOS, but it only supports recent Pixel devices: https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
- moose4400 3y agoCalyxOs is also an alternative.
- moose4400 3y agoI'm currently running GrapheneOS on a Pixel. Been using for a few months and no complaints.
- alwayslikethis 3y agoLineageos is still here, GrapheneOS and CalyxOS is more updated and presumably more secure and private, but Graphene only supports Pixels and Calyx supports Pixels plus some other models. Pixels should be your best bet in terms of ROM compatibility.
- olyjohn 3y agoIt sucks. There's basically no other choice except a Pixel phone. And even some of them are locked if you buy it through your carrier. I would get some Linux phone even if they aren't perfect, but I have no cell reception, and rely on Wifi calling, which seems to be some proprietary thing that only Apple and Google are able to implement.
- fsflover 3y agoHow about PureOS?
- aftergibson 3y ago
- RecycledEle 3y agoWe need a law, and that"s coming from a libertarian. If the owner of a hardware device is using it, that person has total control over the device. Nothing can be blocked. Nothing can be hidden. All data must be available in plain language. That owner/user should have the right to inspect and modify everything in the device in plain language. With today's memory / storage capacities and with today's LLMs, that should be easily implemented by starting over and reprogramming everything. Maybe I should fork a few FOSS products and build this in.
- CrazyPyroLinux 3y ago> We need a law, and that"s coming from a libertarian. > easily implemented by starting over and reprogramming everything. Press X to doubt. Theoretically a free market would/should solve this. That's been the dream of Free Software and hardware. Today you can run GNU/Linux on a PinePhone, or GrapheneOS or similar de-Googled Androids on a Pixel.
- sp332 3y agoHow would a free market prevent Samsung from doing this?
- worewood 3y agoIn his mind a free market enables customers to boycott phones with such shenanigans. Problem is, this assumes all people are properly educated, aware and motivated which is never the case. The market can never be 100% free.
- Skunkleton 3y agoI truly free market ends in monopoly and total loss of choice. Current regulations seem to end with duopoly which is not much better.
- cortesoft 3y agoIn a free market, people choosing not to buy Samsung phones would prevent them from doing this.
- richwater 3y agoFrankly, I can't imagine a reason not to buy an iPhone instead of whatever Android device happens to be around besides ideological differences. The customer experience is so vastly superior to these bloatware filled, borderline spyware Samsung/Xiamoi/OnePlus devices.
- croes 3y agoWhat Samsung did is actually more of an Apple move. Total control, even the source shop of your phone.
- tjpnz 3y agoI'm not buying after the client scanning debacle. That they would even come up with something like troubles me greatly, and I was tempted to ditch Android at that point.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- _fat_santa 3y agoSamsung and the other manufacturers shot themselves in the foot so hard on this one. When this news trickles down to the average Mexican (ie someone not in the tech industry), the message they will get won't be "don't buy grey market phones, buy official phones", it will be "don't by Samsung, ZTE, etc, they will lock your phone".
- codetrotter 3y agoI see a lot of ZTE phones in the stores here in Cancún. I’ve not seen that brand before coming here. Some of them are pretty cheap even. I thought about buying one so that I could leave my iPhone in the hotel room some days and only carry a cheap phone when I am outside walking in some parts of the city. We are leaving Cancún soon, so now there is not so much point in doing that anyways. But I was thinking that I could do so when we get to Panama in a few days, or the next time I come back to South America. After your comment I am rethinking buying a ZTE phone ever. However, I didn’t hear ZTE mentioned in the video. Is ZTE somehow connected to Samsung?
- windowsrookie 3y agoZTE is not connected to Samsung. There were some budget ZTE phones sold in the USA about 10 years ago. I believe ZTE was banned by the US government, along with Huawei for doing shady things.
- elvis70 3y agoRelated: "Samsung and other manufacturers disable phones bought on gray markets" (10/23/2023, 164 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37990528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37990528
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoAs a text-not-video consumer, I appreciate being pointed to a source I can read.
- bigger_inside 3y agounrealted to this thread, I know, but yes, thank you. I despise when the top results and the casual links to support something turn out to be videos. I don't want to stop everything I'm doing to dedicate 100% of my attention to something on a fixed take-up time schedule. Give me a text I can scan while my other audio keeps playing, thank you!
- dang 3y agoThanks! Macroexpanded: Samsung and other manufacturers disable phones bought on gray markets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37990528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37990528 - Oct 2023 (166 comments)
- codetrotter 3y ago167 comments now :p
- londons_explore 3y agoIs this an attempt at some anti-theft tech? Ie. prevent phones that have been stolen, either from the supply chain, or from end consumers, from being used. If so - apple and most other manufacturers do the same. But they normally do so only very soon after the theft.
- xtracto 3y agoNo. This is just because phones in Mercadolibre, or other Fayuca places are cheaper and better models than the overpriced ones they sell in Samsung's own "official " store. I'll replace my phone this year. And was looking to buy a samsung s23 ultra. But all my phones are multi sim. Samsung mexico doesn't sell multi sim. But the gray market ones so sell multisim and a 512gb original s23 is $250 USD cheaper than the one sold by Samsung with only single sim.
- adolph 3y agoIs the pricing difference stem from market discrimination on the part of Samsung or tax avoidance on the part of Mercadolibre?
- jakub_g 3y agoI can't tell about Mexico situation, but living in France, you can see offers for imported phones (often shipping directly from China or other countries, with large shipping delays) on all platforms like Amazon, Rakuten, Fnac etc. (apart from original ones from vendors/platform themselves). Usually those imported versions are 10-20% cheaper. I was always suspicious about those deals and wouldn't buy it myself, spending hundreds of bucks and not being sure if I'm getting the real deal, or some fake / limited version with worse networking etc. but given that they're up year after year, probably many people do buy it.
- worewood 3y agoA little of both
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- n_ary 3y agoSo, a hardware I've paid an arm and a leg for can be shutdown by the manufacturer. I think, we've give up too much power and become too tolerant of excessive overreach of these giants. I no longer look into future with optimism.
- xattt 3y agoYou could see this from a mile away with Samsung. They come up with some slick thing with an uncanny valley feel (Bixby, Knox, One UI) only to reinvent the wheel with it within two or three releases. They rotated through three separate TV platforms between 2010 and 2015. The former of the two got shutdown ASAP after the transition. There is no sense of consistency other than their corporate schizophrenia with their products.
- phh 3y ago> They come up with some slick thing with an uncanny valley feel (Bixby, Knox, One UI) only to reinvent the wheel with it within two or three releases. > They rotated through three separate TV platforms between 2010 and 2015. The former of the two got shutdown ASAP after the transition. > There is no sense of consistency other than their corporate schizophrenia with their products. It's fun how I feel like you're quite literally describing Google/Android as well. Google's TV platforms are Chromecast, Nexus Q and Android TV (and don't get me started on Google TV). Android added widgets and then largely forgot about it. Nowadays looks like it came back (partly thanks to Apple supporting it?) Android added blur in Android 2. Removed it in Android 3. Added it in Android 11. Removed it Android 12. Android added dynamic backgrounds in Android 2. Then largely recommended to stop using it. Then added as a beautiful new feature in Pixels. On a more purely technical note, I have even a better one: Does Android's boot.img contain an initramfs? In Android 6 yes, in Android 7/8 it depends, in Android 9 no, in Android 10 yes, in Android 14 no. And Google also like to remove user's data without much recourse.
- switch007 3y agoYup. Samsung has no business being a customer-facing company. It's embarrassing. Their home appliances are trash too
- ForkMeOnTinder 3y agoI'd love more technical details on how this was possible. What system in the OS/baseband is responsible? If you installed LineageOS could you protect yourself?
- joering2 3y agoIs this news specific to Samsung? Doesn't iPhone have same feature? I mean why would we assume all these devices stolen from California Apple stores should keep working like nothing happen??
- lannisterstark 3y agobecause this isn't about stolen devices.
- TheChaplain 3y agoTip; Syncthing is available for Android and is really really good to keep your data distributed. Thought it would kill my battery when I installed it, but it's very well optimized. Even Google Play services drains more battery.
- m-p-3 3y agoI use Syncthing-Fork just for the ability to set it up so that it doesn't try to sync all the time to save battery and mobile data.
- kazinator 3y agoEverything Samsung I ever owned was a piece of shit, going back to a 2002 era DVD player whose firmware failed a week after it went out of warranty, booting up to a frozen screen full of garbage pixels. I decided some years ago never to get another Samsung anything.