Digital rights group says silence from Samsung raises fears over covert data access
South Korean tech giant Samsung has come under fire after users flagged that its devices contained what cybersecurity experts are calling bloatware across multiple regions globally.
Bloatware is a pre-installed application that runs on a device’s operating system. Initially, the software, AppCloud, was reported to be pre-installed in Samsung Galaxy A and M series phones across West Asia and North Africa.
But now, users from Europe and South Asia have reported that the bloatware also comes pre-installed on their devices, and is "unremovable".
Uninstalling bloatware requires root access, the highest level of control in a computer system.
In February, SMEX (formerly Social Media Exchange), a digital rights organisation based in Beirut, reported that AppCloud secretly harvests user data and lacks an accessible privacy policy, raising legal and ethical concerns due to its ties to the Israeli firm ironSource.
IronSource has been notorious for building invasive programmes that allow it to install software on the user’s device without permission.
Some of the software it has built in the past, like InstallCore, was successfully able to circumvent the user validation process and bypass security checks, including antivirus programmes.
IronSource is now owned by the American company Unity, which provides software solutions for mobile phones, tablets and other devices.
SMEX reported that uninstalling the bloatware is "not possible without root access".
"Since AppCloud seems to be built into the system by Samsung, there is no way to purchase a new model without it," the report said.
The organisation in May wrote an open letter to Samsung after receiving no answers from the company about the serious privacy threat.
"Samsung’s terms of service mention third-party applications but do not specifically address AppCloud or ironSource, despite the significant data access and control granted to this bloatware app," the letter read. (more...)
Samsung users report ‘unremovable’ Israeli bloatware AppCloud on devices
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