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Why I will never buy another Samsung device

lehtimaeki.medium.com

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Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#291

Post by theshrike79 »

midrus wrote: post #168
jiggawatts wrote: post #160

I avoid all things Samsung for a much more important reason: They spy on you mercilessly, up to about the same level as Facebook. For example, they take screenshots of what you watch on your Samsung Televisions! Don't believe me? Take it from them: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources/tv-... and https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/insights/ You're not their customer, you're the product.…

Any alternatives? What would you recommend instead? I'm under the suspicion that every single Smart TV vendor has the same problems.

LG stuff is the best, they run WebOs, not Android and are generally usable without an internet connection.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#292

Post by gonzo41 »

MathCodeLove wrote: post #228
gonzo41 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of times in Apples history where looking cool has won out over practical concerns. People have more money than sense and will happily ignore that they could buy a rock solid (literally) feature phone for <50 dollars, if in doing the opposite they can look trendy.

Suggestions for a rock solid <$50 phone? Been wanting to buy a few for hands on application testing.

I would stick to using an emulator if you can, but the ZTE and vivo cheapies are pretty good.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#293

Post by NorwegianDude »

spideymans wrote: post #142
atty wrote: post #11

I remember fondly when I had an iPod, the one time I had an issue with it (can’t remember what, honestly), I just walked into an apple store and probably 5-10 minutes later walked out with a new device, free of charge, no questions asked (after they tried resetting it once) I’m sure someone in these companies has made a spreadsheet that shows permissive repair and replacement policies cost $X million a year, but it p…

Gosh. I hate Apple’s right to repair BS, but to this day Apple remains the only consumer electronics company that has provided a consistently positive technical support experience for me. It’s so hard to step out the Apple ecosystem when these other manufacturers have consistently screwed me over with repairs. I’m specifically calling out Dell, Samsung and LG here. All were utterly terrible experiences. Dell was the…

And for me Dell is the OEM I trust the most as if something goes wrong with my XPS laptop Dell will happily spend the cost of the laptop just to get someone here by tomorrow to fix it.

Nobody else I know of stands behind their laptops like that. If a company by default bets money on their own products then that's reassuring. Is the product any good? Prove it, like Dell.

Not that XPS laptops don't fail, cause they do, but at least it's rare enough that Dell is willing to spend large amounts on on-site next business day repair.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#294

Post by zrobotics »

HWR_14 wrote: post #211
square_usual wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure just about every TV brand is doing this now. Roku and FireTV are well known - there's literal research papers out there about the tracking they do - and a ton of TVs come bundled with Roku or FireTV these days. AFAIK LG is also doing that but I don't have a quotable source on it.

Roku has a menu item to toggle their spyware. I don't know if it is respected or covers all spying.

From my (non-exhaustive) looking with wireshark, toggling that menu item doesn't impact the number of domains contacted or amount of data transferred.

Which is a shame, I love the roku for how easy it is to use. I'll continue to use it, since there isn't a easy to operate OSS alternative, but it is disappointing.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#295

Post by jiggawatts »

p410n3 wrote: post #282
jiggawatts wrote: post #160

I avoid all things Samsung for a much more important reason: They spy on you mercilessly, up to about the same level as Facebook. For example, they take screenshots of what you watch on your Samsung Televisions! Don't believe me? Take it from them: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources/tv-... and https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/insights/ You're not their customer, you're the product.…

What exactly was so terrible? I'd like to re evaluate my planned next phone purchase but you didn't provide details really. Thanks in advance :)

One specific thing that I have first-hand experience of is they have a culture of assigning blame instead of preventing access.

So for example, everyone has local admin access, or even network-wide admin access. Instead of Active Directory accounts, users are tracked by their client IP address. In effect, you are your IP address on the network.

Most activity is logged, and then correlated by IP address so that blame can be assigned after-the-fact.

So for example, if you're caught editing a production web page live on the server while 40K people are scratching their heads wondering why they can't log in that morning, you'll get blamed because the remote connection came from your desktop IP when that happened.

Nothing stops some random junior developer editing the production web site on the fly. He'll just be reprimanded or fired.

(NOTE: Some of the specifics above may be out of date now, but the security culture likely remains)

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#296

Post by RF_Savage »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #78
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to abuse new iPhones, and before the warranty ran out claim that the battery life was not up to scratch. They always replaced my phone. Once I got a new phone when the damage was clearly my fault but I played dumb anyway. I am still buying Apple products. So jokes on me.

I've been on the other side: Dealing with returns and warranty claims at scale, albeit at a much larger company. You're not alone. A lot of people will invest a lot of time into lying, playing dumb, making threats (think people with a lot of Twitter followers threatening to broadcast how terrible your company is unless you give them exactly what they want) and other manipulative tactics to abuse warranty claims. Ulti…

Yeah I remember one customer with multiple destroyed tv's (spilled beer or other moisture damage, panels had rust) getting them repaired on samsungs dime because they ware "the voice of the customer".

It was annoying, but we did bill samsung for all the work. :)

The blogs author might also like the fact that samsung owns their warranty repair infrastructure, they don't contract it out. So less repairs means more profit. While contractors repair everything that is not obviously deliberate.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#297

Post by eitland »

spideymans wrote: post #142
atty wrote: post #11

I remember fondly when I had an iPod, the one time I had an issue with it (can’t remember what, honestly), I just walked into an apple store and probably 5-10 minutes later walked out with a new device, free of charge, no questions asked (after they tried resetting it once) I’m sure someone in these companies has made a spreadsheet that shows permissive repair and replacement policies cost $X million a year, but it p…

Gosh. I hate Apple’s right to repair BS, but to this day Apple remains the only consumer electronics company that has provided a consistently positive technical support experience for me. It’s so hard to step out the Apple ecosystem when these other manufacturers have consistently screwed me over with repairs. I’m specifically calling out Dell, Samsung and LG here. All were utterly terrible experiences. Dell was the…

> If anyone can suggest non-Apple OEMs that at least provide a competitive support experience, I’m all ears.

Here in Norway it used to be (at least with HP) that if you bought the professional line you'd get professional service.

I had a personal nc6320 bought some 17 years ago and they would literally come to my desk and replace the monitor free of charge. (No, I didn't have a paid support plan, this was included in the purchase price and I had bought it myself, not through a company.)

Around the same time, trying to get a consumer grade HP repaired was just painful.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#298

Post by p410n3 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #295
p410n3 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly was so terrible? I'd like to re evaluate my planned next phone purchase but you didn't provide details really. Thanks in advance :)

One specific thing that I have first-hand experience of is they have a culture of assigning blame instead of preventing access . So for example, everyone has local admin access, or even network-wide admin access. Instead of Active Directory accounts, users are tracked by their client IP address. In effect, you are your IP address on the network. Most activity is logged, and then correlated by IP address so that blame…

That does indeed sound like heaven for insider threats. Thank you very much for following up. I'll think about this information.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#299

Post by lodovic »

sofixa wrote: post #274
CrendKing wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you set up your router or PiHole to block the tracking domains? There has to be list of those.

The problem is some TV related software ( like Chromecasts and i suppose Android TV / Google TV ) use hardcored DNS servers, so a DNS level filter doesn't help.

You can block port 53 (DNS) at the firewall and allow only traffic from and to the PiHole.
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