Hacker News

Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

2025-06-213:06827476smex.org

In recent months, we have received numerous reports from users across West Asia and North Africa (WANA) expressing alarm over a little-known but deeply intrusive bloatware application—AppCloud—pre…

In recent months, we have received numerous reports from users across West Asia and North Africa (WANA) expressing alarm over a little-known but deeply intrusive bloatware application—AppCloud—pre-installed on Samsung’s A and M series smartphones. Without users’ knowledge or consent, this bloatware collects sensitive personal data, cannot be removed without compromising device security, and offers no clear information about its privacy practices.

AppCloud, developed by the controversial Israeli-founded company ironSource (now owned by the American company Unity), is embedded into devices sold in countries where such affiliations carry legal implications. Despite the serious privacy and security risks, Samsung has offered no transparency on how AppCloud functions, what data it collects, or why users cannot opt out.

This open letter, addressed to Samsung, calls for immediate transparency, accountability, and dialogue. Users deserve to know what is installed on their devices and how their data is being used, especially amid Israel’s espionage campaigns in the region. 

_________

To Whom it May Concern, 

We are writing to urgently request that Samsung be transparent regarding the pre-installation of AppCloud on its A and M series smartphones, particularly in West Asia and North Africa (WANA). We ask that Samsung provide information about AppCloud’s privacy practices, opt-out and removal options, and that Samsung reconsider future pre-installations in light of privacy rights. We also request a meeting with Samsung teams to discuss these concerns further. 

Since the expansion of Samsung’s partnership with ironSource in 2022, AppCloud has been embedded by default on new A and M devices distributed in this region.

According to our analysis, this intrusive software is unremovable, deeply integrated into the devices’ operating system, making it nearly impossible for regular users to uninstall it without root access, which voids warranties and poses security risks. Even disabling the bloatware is not effective as it can reappear after system updates. 

The privacy policy is opaque, there is no accessible and transparent privacy policy for this bloatware and users are in the dark about what data is collected and how it is used. There is also no straightforward opt-out mechanism. The bloatware collects sensitive user data, including biometric information, IP addresses, device fingerprints. 

The installation of AppCloud is done without any consent from the user, which violates GDPR provisions in the EU and relevant data protection laws in the WANA region states. 

AppCloud is developed by ironSource, an Israel-founded company (now acquired by American company Unity), raising additional legal and ethical concerns in countries where Israeli companies are barred from operating, such as Lebanon. ironSource is notorious for its questionable practices regarding user consent and data privacy. 

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 forced installation of AppCloud undermines the privacy and security rights of users in the MENA region and beyond. The lack of transparency and control over personal data is particularly alarming given Samsung’s significant market share in the region.

In light of these concerns, we respectfully request that Samsung:

  • Disclose the full privacy policy and data handling practices of AppCloud, making this information easily accessible to all users.
  • Offer a straightforward and effective method for users to opt out of AppCloud and remove it from their devices without compromising device functionality or warranty.
  • Provide a clear explanation for the decision to pre-install AppCloud on all A and M series devices in the WANA region.
  • Reconsider the continued pre-installation of AppCloud on future devices, in line with the right to privacy as established by Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
  • We also request a meeting with the relevant Samsung teams to discuss these issues in detail and to better understand the company’s approach to user privacy and data protection in the WANA region.

We look forward to your prompt response and to working together to ensure the privacy and security of all Samsung users.


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Comments

  • By boramalper 2025-06-213:5613 reply

    I suspect a strong link between mass surveillance (by corporations for advertising or by states for intelligence purposes) and the very recent targeting of the senior Iranian nuclear scientist and military officers at their homes in Iran.

    Wherever you are from or whatever side of the conflict you are on, I think we can all agree that it’s never been easier to infer so much about a person from “semi-public” sources such as companies selling customer data and built-in apps that spy on their users and call home. It allows intelligence agencies to outsource intelligence gathering to the market, which is probably cheaper and a lot more convenient than traditional methods.

    “Privacy is a human right” landed on deaf ears but hopefully politicians will soon realise that it’s a matter of national security too.

    • By kragen 2025-06-2111:222 reply

      The truth is far outside the Overton window.

      Yes, privacy is a question of civil defense in the drone age. But the existing crop of states will never acknowledge that; their structure and institutions presume precisely the kind of mass databases of PII that create this vulnerability, as well as institutional transparency for public accountability. This makes them structurally vulnerable to insurgencies that expropriate those databases for targeting. The existing states will continue to clutch at their fantasies of adequately secured taxpayer databases until their territorial control (itself an anachronism in the drone age; boots on the ground can no longer provide security against things like Operation Spiderweb) has been reduced to a few fortified clandestine facilities.

      Things are going to be very unpredictable and, I suspect, extremely violent.

      • By fpoling 2025-06-2118:342 reply

        This has been going on in Russia on massive scale. For bribes officials sells anything including highly sensitive databases. Those were used to uncover various Kremlin-run assassins targeting oppositions. Then Ukrainian special services used those to target high-ranking Russian military officers. Russia tried to crack down on that but it just increased the database price tag.

        • By kragen 2025-06-2119:331 reply

          Do you have sources for that? No problem if they're not in English.

        • By mattigames 2025-06-2122:471 reply

          If Putin didn't want bribery to go rampant he would set the example, and force other top leaders to do the same, but instead he flaunts his properties, yats, women that he enjoys; but it's probably a price too high for him to pay. I bet Xi Ping enjoys similar privileges but in much more private manner.

          • By chrz 2025-06-2221:502 reply

            if you think you can stop bribery in communism regime then i have some news for you

            • By solace_silence 2025-06-2222:34

              Agreed, they should call it campaign contributions like the U.S.

            • By aleph_minus_one 2025-06-2311:41

              Russia is not a communist country (anymore).

      • By drewbug 2025-06-2113:031 reply

        I used to feel this way until I learned about counter-UAS tech.

        • By kragen 2025-06-2113:241 reply

          That's wishful thinking. Flying drones aren't the only threat, or the main threat, and there isn't such a thing as "counter-UAS tech", only counter-yesterday's-UAS tech. Radio jamming was "counter-UAS tech" until the mass production of fiber-optic-controlled FPV drones starting five months ago, for example. You can still find vendors marketing it as such.

          30 milligrams of high explosive is enough to open your daughter's skull, or, more relevantly, your commanding officer's daughter's skull, and there are a thousand ways to deliver it to her if she can be tracked: in pager batteries, crawling, swimming, floating, waiting for ambush, hitchhiking on migratory birds, hitchhiking on car undercarriages, in her Amazon Prime deliveries, falling from a hydrogen balloon in the mesosphere, and so on. And if 30mg is too much, 2mg of ricin on a mechanical ovipositor will do just as well.

          All of this is technically possible today without any new discoveries. At this point it's a straightforward systems development exercise. And you can be sure that there are bad people working for multiple different countries' spy agencies who know this; they don't need me to tell them.

          • By bostik 2025-06-2113:545 reply

            > 30 milligrams of high explosive is enough to open your daughter's skull, or, more relevantly, your commanding officer's daughter's skull, and there are a thousand ways to deliver it

            While we are talking about flying drones, we are not far off from Slaughterbots becoming reality.[0] Why bother with surgical assassinations if you can blanket entire regions with with swarms of autonomous seek-and-destroy explosives?

            After all, as last two years have so amply demonstrated: people are fine with genocide.

            0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU

            • By godelski 2025-06-2118:061 reply

              What's important to remember is that we get to Slaughterbots with "best intentions." Trying to feel safer. Trying to kill our enemies. Trying to protect our friends, families, children. Little by little is how it happens. The road to hell is paved, after all.

              • By nine_k 2025-06-2216:571 reply

                Well, no. People with outright evil intentions, the kind that would hire a hitman, definitely also pour money and brains into the very same research.

                Technologies are morally agnostic: a knife, a rifle, a piece of cryptography, they all work equally well for the noblest and the most nefarious purposes. It's the humans' task to structure the society in such a way that good uses of technology mostly dominate evil uses.

                • By godelski 2025-06-2219:061 reply

                  You're missing the substance of what I've said. No one is denying evil people exist. But take a few more seconds to process what I said...

                  • By nine_k 2025-06-2220:281 reply

                    I know that the road to hell is paved with best intentions. My point is that the pavement is not 100% best intentions, some intentions are outright bad, and we should acknowledge that, and prepare to face that.

                    • By godelski 2025-06-2223:31

                      Yes, I understand. I was trying to point out that essentially everyone default understands that, so it does not need be said. Bad causes bad, people know this or are hopeless. Good causes bad is non-obvious and needs constant reminder.

            • By kragen 2025-06-2114:392 reply

              Slaughterbots is just the beginning; it's definitely too late to prevent that scenario now.

              Why bother? For the same reason to bother with surgical assassinations if you can blanket entire regions with nuclear fireballs. Radioactive wastelands are unprofitable! This is a general problem with genocide: it only gets you land, and since the Green Revolution land is abundant. Protection rackets, on the otehr hand, are highly profitable, but only with some exclusivity; if extortionists multiply, the unique Nash equilibrium is multiple gangs that collectively demand many times the victims' total revenues, resulting in ecological collapse.

              More generally, the threat of violence is only effective as a form of coercion when you can credibly withdraw the violence as a reward for compliance. Violence provides no incentive to comply to someone who believes they are just as likely to be a victim whether they comply or not.

              But swarms of autonomous seek-and-destroy explosives are plausibly the most effective way to provide that surgical-assassination threat, perhaps combined with poisons, solid penetrators, and/or incendiaries. The Minority Report spiders (not yet technically feasible) or a quadcopter can be enormously more selective than a GBU-57, a Hellfire missile, or even a hand grenade, and can choose to avert their attack at the last millisecond upon the presentation of properly signed do-not-assassinate orders, even if long-distance communication is jammed.

              • By nine_k 2025-06-2217:21

                This is correct. But the surgical precision is only enabled by the fact that a person can be reasonably well located and tracked. It's likely not hard to pinpoint a specific person of interest in a vast metropolis, but, IMHO, really hard or impossible to locate a specific wild zebra in an African savanna, because they do not wear tracking devices, and inhabit large areas. So you can target e.g. me in NYC much more easily than some specific zebra, even though the zebra is likely less intellectual and less privacy-conscious.

                Hence, I suppose, important figures will eventually disappear from the public eye. Definitely, a president or a governor must be present in person at many events. But e.g. CEOs of military contractors, or even key scientists and developers in certain fields, may start to fade away, turn pseudonymous, and virtualize, now that remote work and videoconferencing is normalized. They would still be somehow trackable as normal citizens, but their visible connection to their work would be severed and kept an utmost secret, literally a life-and-death secret.

                This would be good news for national defense, but bad news for any dissenters who cross any powerful-enough entities for those to consider an assassination or at least blackmailing. Unlike a hitman, a hit drone can be completely and safely destroyed beyond recognition within an hour, by burning it and grinding the ashes.

                Also, precisely delivered non-lethal means could be quite effective, and hard to track. Inject or just spray a bad virus to disable your opponent for several critical months. Spray a potent allergen if the target is allergic. Inject some LSD into politician's bloodstream an hour before an important meeting or speech. "Innocent" stuff like that.

              • By computerthings 2025-06-2117:54

                [dead]

            • By gruez 2025-06-2114:213 reply

              >After all, as last two years have so amply demonstrated: people are fine with genocide.

              Last two years? Try last few decades at the very least. People only care about the war in Gaza more because it's controversial. For non-controversial cases people just agree it's bad but shrug their shoulders.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_genocide

              • By jonah 2025-06-2115:121 reply

                What's ridiculous is that it's even seen as controversial by some.

                • By tomalbrc 2025-06-2120:09

                  It is will how some people will live in their bubble and not see the controversies

              • By chrz 2025-06-2222:11

                People care because they follow news. You dont send reporters where you dont want news about.

              • By aleph_minus_one 2025-06-2311:47

                In many European countries people do care about the Bosnian genocide - I mean the geographical distance is not that far from where they live.

                This also explains the more prevalent ignorance concerning the other two genocides of your list: they are simply for away from the place the respective person lives.

            • By autoexec 2025-06-2120:51

              It's sad that it was only months after that video was released that autonomous drones were being used to kill people in war. That video was meant as a warning but it was totally ignored.

            • By MoonGhost 2025-06-228:27

              > After all, as last two years have so amply demonstrated: people are fine with genocide.

              And open war crimes like intentionally killing civilians (TV broadcasters in Iran for example, or Gaza en mass)

    • By chaosbolt 2025-06-218:024 reply

      I suspect Israel has backdoor access to most CPUs.

      Here is how Pegasus seems: - China has 1.5 billion people, lots of resources, would profit a lot economically if they found a way to hack iOS, etc. But yet couldn't hack it. - Israel with its 7 million people, not only hacks iOS multiple times, but does it to spy on its allies.

      Now I've seen the threads analysing Pegasus' complexity, I don't know if it's been reproduced, and if it has then I guess it logically proves me wrong (the tinfoil hatter in me still thinks its right though).

      Here is why:

      Israel has a lot of silicon fabs or R&D centers, now it makes ZERO sense for the US to have fabs or R&D centers in Israel, since that country is (allegedly) always at the risk of being bomber for no reason at all (yeah right).

      Intel has had fabs in Israek since the 80s, why not in Japan or France or the UK (France and the UK are close allies to the US and have no earthquakes or risk of being bombed), why not even Canada?

      And I compared the dates of when intel started putting the Intel Management Engine in all of their CPU and the date of which they built their biggest fab in Israel, then I went down the rabbit hole of when AMD started using PSP (similar tech to Intel ME), and it coinciding with it buying a large pentesting startup in Israel, then starting to build its R&D centers there, Apple and Qualcomm have similar stories.

      Obviously this is all tinfoil, and while the dates coincide it's obviously not enough.

      But to each their own, and I choose to treat my tech as if it was all was backdoored already, because for me the evidence (while not enough to be sure) is enough for how much I value my privacy.

      • By saagarjha 2025-06-2112:20

        > China has 1.5 billion people, lots of resources, would profit a lot economically if they found a way to hack iOS, etc. But yet couldn't hack it.

        What makes you think China can't hack iOS?

      • By 1oooqooq 2025-06-2116:02

        pegasus Occam's razor:

        - the smaller country hacked ios, have to sell it to recoup r&d costs, got caught many times.

        - the larger country hacked ios, don't need to sell it around, haven't been caught.

      • By Hizonner 2025-06-2113:44

        > Here is how Pegasus seems: - China has 1.5 billion people, lots of resources, would profit a lot economically if they found a way to hack iOS, etc. But yet couldn't hack it.

        That you know of. Maybe they just don't indiscriminately sell the results to anybody who shows they have money. Or maybe they have different strategies for spying.

        > - Israel with its 7 million people, not only hacks iOS multiple times,

        NSO and friends find zero-days or buy them on the open market (not just from Israel). Citizen Lab has identified specific vulnerabilities used to install Pegasus. The exploits don't require or use CPU back doors.

        ... and you think Israel's smaller population somehow translates into better infiltrators than China has, but not better hackers than China has? Israel also makes better halva than China, by the way.

        That kind of "logic" is what turns you into a loony raving on a street corner somewhere.

        > but does it to spy on its allies.

        Everybody spies on their allies, at least opportunistically. But Pegasus is a commercial product, sold to basically every government and mostly used to spy on normal people, not other governments. The people writing it have ties to Israeli spies, and I'm sure it's been used by Israeli spies, but it's general-purpose.

        > Israel has a lot of silicon fabs

        As far as I can tell, Israel has one facility capable of making remotely serious CPUs. It's owned by Intel. There are no phones using Intel processors.

        The processors in iPhones are "Designed by Apple in Cupertino" and fabbed by TSMC in Taiwan. The processors in basically all other phones are ARM, and most of them also come from TSMC. Pegasus does not run on Intel processors, ever.

        > And I compared the dates of when intel started putting the Intel Management Engine in all of their CPU and the date of which they built their biggest fab in Israel

        So the fab somehow reached out into the rest of Intel and retroactively caused it to develop a heavily advertised feature?

      • By bsaul 2025-06-218:201 reply

        [flagged]

        • By cma 2025-06-218:44

          Many are also US citizens who could work at research labs in the US without a visa. Something like 50K or 100K of the illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank alone are US citizens.

    • By mike_d 2025-06-215:292 reply

      > I suspect a strong link between mass surveillance [...] and the very recent targeting of the senior Iranian nuclear scientist and military officers at their homes in Iran.

      We all like to imagine this super cool clandestine hacking operation using peoples mobile phones to secretly track people who visit nuclear facilities back to their homes.

      The much more logical explanation is someone approached a low level employee at the MEAF who turned over a USB stick with the governments org charts and payroll records in exchange for their kids getting a full ride to a prestigious foreign university.

      • By michaelt 2025-06-2114:083 reply

        > The much more logical explanation is someone approached a low level employee at the MEAF who turned over a USB stick with the governments org charts and payroll records in exchange for their kids getting a full ride to a prestigious foreign university.

        If there are spies in foreign countries going around offering life-changing sums of money for USB sticks, which people are accepting

        is it not also plausible that folks at google/samsung/apple/aws/cloudflare/microsoft are getting offered life-changing sums of money for leaving their work-from-home laptop unattended for 5 minutes?

        • By AnthonyMouse 2025-06-2120:131 reply

          This is the thing that has always concerned me about Cloudflare. The structure of their operation is "we do a MITM on most of the encryption on the internet". Even if that doesn't make you immediately suspicious that it was set up as a spying operation on purpose (compare "encryption added/removed here" Snowden slide), it makes them a massive state espionage target. Do they really have the ability to resist that level of persistent targeting from every country in the world?

          • By scripturial 2025-06-221:091 reply

            Cloudflare is a US company right? One assumes it’s controlled (if not directly, then indirectly) by US intelligence interests. That would protect it from non US intelligence influence would it not?

            • By AnthonyMouse 2025-06-222:03

              Does the US intelligence apparatus protect its networks with some kind of theurgy preventing the government of Russia or Iran from finding any 0-day before they do from time to time, and have a source of infallible humans immune to bribery or extortion?

        • By heavyset_go 2025-06-2114:341 reply

          Yes, this happens. Industrial espionage is popular.

          From what I've seen with bribes, it doesn't even take life-changing amounts of money.

          • By bawolff 2025-06-2118:401 reply

            I imagine in a country like Iran where there is a sizable minority that hates the regime, someone might have done it for free.

            • By chrz 2025-06-2222:14

              Imagine all countries

        • By im3w1l 2025-06-2217:291 reply

          > google/samsung/apple/aws/cloudflare/microsoft

          One thing to keep in mind is those people are already paid quite well. What life can you offer them that they don't already have? Blackmail is a likelier angle.

          • By heavyset_go 2025-06-2220:58

            You'd be surprised. We had a cop making over $250k/year extorting people for $20 bribes here. It isn't always about the money.

      • By boramalper 2025-06-219:312 reply

        Israel, like any other state, must be using a variety of methods including good old "human intelligence" so it's not either-or.

        In addition, saying that

        > someone approached a low level employee at the MEAF who turned over a USB stick with the governments org charts and payroll records in exchange for their kids getting a full ride to a prestigious foreign university

        is an oversimplification on multiple levels:

        1. Low-level employees typically don't have access to sensitive information.

        2. With human intelligence, there is always a risk that the person you (e.g. Israel) are in touch with (e.g. an Iranian officer) who pretends to be a "double agent" (e.g. leaking info to Israel), is in fact a "triple agent" (e.g. actually working for Iran to mislead Israel).

        3. You can send your kids to foreign universities but not your siblings, your parents, your wife's family, and so on... Some of your beloved ones are almost certain to suffer the consequences of your actions. High treason is no joke.

        • By SirHumphrey 2025-06-2111:201 reply

          > 1. Low-level employees typically don't have access to sensitive information.

          You would think, but when I was interning (well, it was a paid internship) for a company, I was fixing an excel spreadsheet with payroll information for an entire department of a few hundred people. Not the best piece of "opsec", but when you are in a hurry (pay was due in a couple of days) and most people are on vacations "hey the junior kid can probably fix it, he seems fine" is a way too common approach. And it is fine - sometimes for a long time. Until it isn't.

          • By aswanson 2025-06-2111:40

            Yeah I recall being a new hire at a defense contractor, getting a login, and accidentally opening an excel sheet with a ton of management user names and logins. People are sloppy.

        • By bigfatkitten 2025-06-226:58

          > 1. Low-level employees typically don't have access to sensitive information.

          Snowden was a contract Sharepoint admin. He was on the absolute bottom of the org chart.

    • By FilosofumRex 2025-06-215:092 reply

      Almost all of Iran's cell network system was originally installed by S. Korean firms. They've changed some to Chinese brands, but apparently the compromised S. Korean brands are still around.

      • By Digital28 2025-06-216:086 reply

        Changing from SK to CN is a trade from intentional vulnerability to unintentional vulnerability. I’ve yet to see a secure piece of software come out of China in my 30+ years of coding.

        • By jeroenhd 2025-06-2112:351 reply

          When a security analysis was done of Chinese parts of the Dutch mobile network, that was pretty much the conclusion: Chinese vendors deliver software and components full of vulnerabilities, but none of them seem to be intentional.

          Since then there has been a movement to reduce Chinese vendors in general our if security concerns, as well as to improve the security posture of the mobile networks by doing things like "encrypting connections" and "switching away from telnet".

          On the other hand, the Chinese managed to break into the US wiretapping system, so it's not like other networks aren't vulnerable either.

          • By vardump 2025-06-2113:091 reply

            > Chinese vendors deliver software and components full of vulnerabilities, but none of them seem to be intentional.

            Plausible deniability.

            • By GTP 2025-06-2119:14

              If we're talking about cheap products, then it's more likely due to cost savings rather than malice. But yeah, no one can give you defitive proof of this.

        • By FirmwareBurner 2025-06-2111:43

          >I’ve yet to see a secure piece of software come out of China in my 30+ years of coding.

          SW coming out of Korea's domestic industry giants isn't any better. Because they used to treat SW like a cost center or another item on the BoM.

          IIRC, the only way to do online banking in Korea years ago, was you needed Internet explorer and some active-X plugin that supported encryption.

          Some Korean giants do have good SW, but a lot of it is developed internationally by offices outside of Korea.

        • By Dah00n 2025-06-2110:43

          Yet in telco it is much easier and faster to get a bug fixed in Chinese equipment. IMO it is more likely you don't work with critical infrastructure than the problem being Chinese equipment.

        • By dragonelite 2025-06-2118:40

          Better to swallow the poison that doesn't kill you(for now) than to swallow the one that is intended to kill you.

        • By ReptileMan 2025-06-2111:203 reply

          Supermicro IPMI comes to mind. If it was compromised we would have known by now.

        • By monster_truck 2025-06-2113:103 reply

          Brother you cannot be serious with this racist take

          • By bbarnett 2025-06-2113:522 reply

            Saying that a culture is poor at security dev, such as Chinese business culture, is not even remotely rasist.

            There are many ethnicities in China, people of all genetic backgrounds. It is the culture that is the problem, not the race.

            For example, there are many ethnically Chinese people who grew up in the West, working in businesses, in countries where there is a culture of security.

            Now, you could label it 'culturalist', and maybe it is, but there are definitely inferior and superior cultures. Especially, there are parts of cultures which are quite comparable this way.

            • By AJ007 2025-06-2115:23

              There's also another point that security is really fucking expensive. Apple on Google spend billions a year on security, yet their phones are broken in to once they are a couple of years old. Big American software companies have large margins and large budgets. Those Chinese companies are running on fumes (and credit.)

              Security and encryption is taken as a given by Western regulators given how many times they pass laws to break encryption. If you look at targeted 0-days, the conclusion would be more along the lines of the very best hardware+software is barely secure.

            • By gruez 2025-06-2114:443 reply

              >>Brother you cannot be serious with this racist take

              >There are many ethnicities in China, people of all genetic backgrounds. It is the culture that is the problem, not the race.

              This just seems like nitpicking to me. Colloquially most people would classify discrimination based on country of origin, or "culture" (whatever that means) as racism, even if it doesn't meet the technical definition. For instance Trump's travel bans have been called by many as "racist", even though it covers a bunch of countries, and even though the countries are majority muslim, it also excludes major muslim countries like Pakistan and Indonesia.

              • By const_cast 2025-06-2123:461 reply

                It's entirely fair game to criticism or even discriminate based on culture, because culture is composed of actions. If people act in such a way that you do not like, that's a valid reason not to like them.

                Now, we do still need to respect cultural differences where it makes sense and consider the historical context behind cultural differences, such as colonialism.

                • By drysine 2025-06-229:461 reply

                  Nazis used to measure skull dimensions to discriminate on race. How do you measure "culture" of an individual? Just apply a stereotype based on the country of origin?

                  • By const_cast 2025-06-2222:241 reply

                    You… ask them? Or they tell you?

                    Like, for example, cultures which are outwardly hostile towards women and their autonomy don’t keep that as a secret. In those places, it’s well known and obvious.

              • By exe34 2025-06-2115:551 reply

                Just because most people are wrong doesn't mean we should encourage the dilution of words.

                • By gruez 2025-06-2117:351 reply

                  I might be sympathetic to this argument if the severity actually differed, eg. people calling mean tweets "violence" or something, but that's not what's happening there. I don't see any meaningfully difference between "I'm discriminating against you because you're Chinese" (culture/nationality) and "I'm discriminating you're Han Chinese" (ethnicity). I doubt the average racist actually knows the distinction between the two anyways, and I doubt people are going to be like "oh you're discriminating based on culture instead of ethnicity? I guess that's fine then!".

                  • By exe34 2025-06-2118:07

                    > I don't see any meaningfully difference between "I'm discriminating against you because you're Chinese" (culture/nationality) and "I'm discriminating you're Han Chinese" (ethnicity).

                    It's interesting you would write this as if nobody's pointed out actual cultural differences yet.

              • By Dylan16807 2025-06-2116:04

                > This just seems like nitpicking to me. Colloquially most people would classify discrimination based on country of origin, or "culture" (whatever that means) as racism, even if it doesn't meet the technical definition.

                Nobody is going to believe you're talking about real things if you let people call your argument "racism" so it's not nitpicking if you can explain why it's not. Also the word "discrimination" is itself a loaded term.

                And yes areas having cultures is real. Sometimes it's tied to country, sometimes it's not.

                > Trump's travel bans have been called by many as "racist", even though it covers a bunch of countries,

                I'm confused? Covering a whole bunch of countries sharing a demographic is much more likely to be a racist move than picking one or two.

                > and even though the countries are majority muslim, it also excludes major muslim countries like Pakistan and Indonesia.

                That's a good argument against saying "muslim ban" but I'm pretty sure a focus on the middle east makes it more about race.

          • By greenchair 2025-06-2114:001 reply

            is it racist to wonder why I rarely see a chinese restaurant with inspection score above 80? culture differences are a real thing (if you don't have your head buried in the sand that is).

            • By throw3434566 2025-06-235:01

              Depends on what you attribute the score to.

              I've worked in many restaurants and a lot of the health scores are stacked against ethnic restaurants and how they prepare foods.

              Your score gets knocked down if you have soups simmering for too long, but in Chinese cuisine it's often times common to have the broth cooking for more than 12 hours.

          • By heraldgeezer 2025-06-2123:39

            Zoomers need to leave this site.

      • By throw123xz 2025-06-219:311 reply

        It's a mistake to assume that a very capable country can't get into a network that uses Chinese equipment/software.

        • By Dah00n 2025-06-2110:413 reply

          It's also a mistake to assume that a very capable country can't get into a network that uses US equipment/software... especially Cisco equipment with all the "forgotten" hardcoded logins. Iran is better off with Chinese equipment than American or Korean.

          • By throw123xz 2025-06-240:48

            Who made that assumption? The comment I replied to said that the network deployed by S. Korean firms was compromised and implied that the one from China was safe. I'm just pointing out that using Huawei or ZTE won't stop a country like Israel.

          • By kragen 2025-06-2111:111 reply

            Nobody knows enough to say whether Iran is better off with Chinese equipment, because most of the intentional backdoors on every side of this struggle remain undiscovered by the other sides.

            • By dse1982 2025-06-2111:241 reply

              Well, China is more on the side of Iran than the US or US allies. So there is that.

              • By kragen 2025-06-2111:27

                Yes, but that doesn't imply they want Iran's telecommunications network to be a black box to the PLA.

          • By mensetmanusman 2025-06-2111:40

            Not if you know math…

    • By aussieguy1234 2025-06-214:471 reply

      Weather apps are one of the worst offenders here. Almost all share your location info with data brokers if you give them location access.

      Check the weather today, get bombed tomorrow.

      • By FridayoLeary 2025-06-220:251 reply

        To be fair that's pretty much the forecast in both Iran and israel at the moment.

    • By lm28469 2025-06-2112:202 reply

      If you're a valuable enough target, like these Iranians generals/scientists they just need to find you once and then they can continuously track your movements via satellite. They don't need much precision, just which building to level

      • By mousethatroared 2025-06-2114:272 reply

        "Just which building to level"

        What's "just" a war crime amongst friends?

        • By bawolff 2025-06-2118:321 reply

          Some of the footage coming out of Iran of the aftermath of these assinations have shown specific rooms in buildings targeted, leaving the rest of the building in-tact. For a high value military target like chief of the armed forces, it seems unlikely that would be a warcrime as the civilian casualities would be low compared to the military advantage of the target.

          [The nuclear scientists on the other hand are much more questionable because its pretty unclear if they are legal targets at all]

          • By mousethatroared 2025-06-221:561 reply

            Since Israel started the war without authorization being the security council, it's legally the aggressor. Which means the actions in of themselves are crimes, regardless of where they are conducted.

            Of course, Israel has hit hospitals in Tehran. And condos. War crimes.

            So, no matter how you slice it, Israel commits war crimes as a matter of course.

            Now, one could object and say that Israel has to commit war crimes because it's so endangered. If that's the case, why doesn't it go to the security council and get authorization for lethal military action? Who on the security council would vote against Israel if the threat was remotely real?

            • By bawolff 2025-06-225:24

              I meant my response specificly in the context of the post i was responding to - namely that Israel was tracking some high level officials and then bombing the building they were in - which is what i assume the parent was claiming was a war crime.

              Other actions in this conflict of course could be crimes and require appropriate analysis.

              > Since Israel started the war without authorization being the security council, it's legally the aggressor. Which means the actions in of themselves are crimes, regardless of where they are conducted.

              I disagree with the way you phrased this. The analysis of if the use of force is legal in general should be separate from if individual actions are war crimes. See https://www.icrc.org/en/law-and-policy/jus-ad-bellum-and-jus... which emphasizes that jus ad bellum is separate from jus in bello.

              Israel is probably going to claim self-defense here (you do not need UNSC permission for a defensive war). The claim is probably pretty far-fetched unless there is some bombshell evidence we are not privy to, as the threat does not seem imminent the way self-defense normally requires.

              OTOH - the last time anyone cared about the crime of agression was germany in WW2 (although there are some voices about ukraine & russia). People tend to care much more about war crimes than crimes of aggression.

              > Israel has hit hospitals in Tehran

              I'm not aware of this allegation. I did hear an allegation from Iran about a hospital in Kermanshah. Regardless, if it is true, it would indeed probably be a war crime. (Generally speaking. Details do matter in these sorts of things)

              > And condos

              I think the analysis of this would require knowing what specificly was targeted. Generally of course, civilian housing is not an acceptable target, but if for example,it was housing for senior military leadership, that might change things.

              > Now, one could object and say that Israel has to commit war crimes because it's so endangered.

              If by war crime you mean commit "agression" (to be clear, the crime of agression is not a war crime. These are two separate categories of crimes), this would be an argument that the act is not "agression", since defensive wars are allowed to be done without UNSC approval. You only need UNSC approval if you are not facing an imininent threat.

              > Who on the security council would vote against Israel if the threat was remotely real?

              Security council is largely about geopolitics, and russia & iran are allies.

        • By Henchman21 2025-06-2116:563 reply

          When there is no one willing to prosecute it, is it still a crime?

          • By consp 2025-06-2117:26

            Yes, though one without consequences. Until the next guy comes along and actually enforced it.

          • By mousethatroared 2025-06-221:13

            Of course it is. Is a rapist innocent if he gets away?

          • By bawolff 2025-06-2118:261 reply

            Nothing stopping Iran from joining the ICC. Except that the investigations would go both ways.

            • By mousethatroared 2025-06-221:591 reply

              Palestine is a member and we all saw what happened there. The US has personally threatened the judges.

              • By bawolff 2025-06-226:23

                I mean, the ICC did issue a warrant for individuals on both sides of that conflict and seems willing to prosecute. The Palestinian national died in the conflict, so obviously could not be prosecuted. The Israeli nationals are regrettably refusing to surrender themselves, which would be an issue no matter which body attempted to prosecute (unless it was a domestic Israeli court). That is hardly a situation unique to this conflict - lots of people with warrants attempt to evade capture.

                The US behaviour is despicable, but ultimately it hasn't really changed anything.

      • By beeflet 2025-06-2118:26

        this is a totally illogical way of understanding warfare in terms of absolutes. Not every target is worth leveling a building over. It isn't that black and white

    • By VagabundoP 2025-06-227:43

      What always shocks me is how much negligence is shown by politicians and cyber inteligence wrt to standard mobiles.

      Anyone who runs a country, especially senior politicians, just shouldn't have a standard mobile.

      It should be a built from the ground up phone by your own countries government services. Running GrapheneOS or something.

      And you shouldn't have a second phone to have your affairs either.

    • By bongodongobob 2025-06-214:54

      Politicians are just the sales and marketing department for multinational corporations and defense contractors. They will never care.

    • By crawsome 2025-06-2113:12

      Someone needs to go into congress and demonstrate to them, live, how easy it is to lift their phone numbers and call them all at once.

    • By PartiallyTyped 2025-06-2110:06

      Europol now argues that privacy is not a right and that we need to “think of the children”. EU is now pushing some abhorrent policies and legislation to demand backdoors.

      We, the people, need to demand and force our politicians to work for us.

    • By larrled 2025-06-2115:05

      “hopefully politicians will soon”

      The gop is controlled by donors who are mostly free market liberals. Elon won’t let anyone “censor” (regulate) x. The democrats don’t care about national security historically, and it’s not currently an issue their cosmopolitan TikTok loving base cares anything, at all, about. “Security” is something that most democrats I talk to now associate with deportation or military spending, both of which they ferociously hate. Across parties, policy and discourse are reactive. Security requires a proactive orientation that it seems the public sector may structurally lack.

    • By htowi3j4324234 2025-06-216:47

      If a state actor is after you, cookie and GAIA-id tracking should be the least of your concerns.

    • By yapyap 2025-06-2212:461 reply

      > “Privacy is a human right” landed on deaf ears but hopefully politicians will soon realise that it’s a matter of national security too.

      lol. lmao even.

      this is the holy mary of security, politicians (US) will not give a damn as long as they’re not the ones being targeted and as long as the ad giants like google and co keep lining their pockets.

  • By AlotOfReading 2025-06-213:434 reply

    Because the link is down:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20250506145643/https://smex.org/...

    The article leaves out quite a lot about what AppCloud is, but it's essentially how Samsung monetizes their non-flagship device users and can do things like insert installation advertisements into the notification tray, and silently install apps.

    Personally, if I found this on my device it'd be the final straw to grit my teeth and finally get a personal apple device.

    • By andrewflnr 2025-06-213:502 reply

      Or just don't get Samsung? I guess I don't know for sure that my phone brand doesn't do anything similar, but it at least hasn't hit the news yet.

      • By boramalper 2025-06-214:005 reply

        > AppCloud—pre-installed on Samsung’s A and M series smartphones.

        Samsung’s A and M series smartphones are their cheapest models so their buyers probably cannot afford better phones. I don’t know of any other brands selling in the region with similarly priced models that have better privacy practices than Samsung either—they’re all the same at that price point I’m afraid.

        • By anonymars 2025-06-214:263 reply

          In my case I wanted a damn SD card slot. And more than 2 years of security updates.

          • By lmm 2025-06-217:221 reply

            Sony still sells flagship phones with an SD slot. I wish my Xperia was cheaper but other than that I'm very happy with it.

          • By imp0cat 2025-06-216:032 reply

            Ano now you see why Samsung is able to provide all that at an attractive price. The real costs are hidden.

            • By anonymars 2025-06-2120:45

              The more expensive phones don't have SD card slots!

              But yeah, presumably in the cheaper markets the Candy Crush whales are subsidizing the phones. Like with Windows these days. Anyway time to go back to playing Fortnite and Marvel Rivals

            • By more-nitor 2025-06-217:02

              hmm have you actually read the article? did you find anything of "substance" other than hand-wavy "this company is from israel, so must be mosad" or "has notorious for its questionable practices" (without even giving actual examples or incidents)?

              I mean, if I was the mosad guy planting a deal with samsung, I wouldn't even name the app "AppCloud"

              heck, why would you even make it appear to the user?

              this is a classic competitor-bashing article -- no substance, only hand-wavy "this guys bad!"

              I'm guessing this can be traced to others like xiami/huawei/etc who definitely want to get samsung's slice of the market there

          • By pomian 2025-06-216:371 reply

            Motorola. Plus it still has an audio port.

            • By anonymars 2025-06-2120:50

              I miss the flashlight chop, but at the time I moved away updates were short and migration was "you're on your own"

        • By j-bos 2025-06-2111:231 reply

          Motorola has well priced excellent phones with minimal bloat.

          • By andrewflnr 2025-06-224:43

            I wasn't going to give them a plug but this is in fact where I landed. The ability to install other ROMs was also a factor.

        • By rs186 2025-06-2114:21

          From first hand experience, I can confirm that AppCloud is installed on certain carrier versions of S series phone as well.

        • By chaosbolt 2025-06-218:151 reply

          No there are lots of Chinese phones with minimal bloatware, like the nothing phone cmf 1, sure they only come with 2 years of updates but what you gonna do at that price...

          If you're in the middle east, I'm sure you'd rather be spied on by China.

          Do you imagine that shit? You're a nuclear scientist, working on a program for generating electricity, your country is open to being audited and complies with the restrictions and has no weapon's program, one day you come home and then a fucking rocket comes right inside your appartment and kils you and your whole family.

          Ain't that a bitch? I get Khamas was hiding there too... And since they have all that precise rockets that can take a single appartment down, why did they reduce Gaza to rubble?

          The ramifications of this make me sick: evil not only wins but also writes history... And yeah the midwits here will unironically look you in the eye and explain how killing children is ok because of this of that... You being able to explain horrors doesn't make you smart or pragmatic, it makes you have no self respect and makes your personal boundaries weak, and the same mind that finds arguments to cope with the horror his tax money funds will find arguments to cope with a lot more until it's his turn on the grinder and by then it'll be too late.

          • By danieldk 2025-06-226:49

            Even if Nothing phones are made in china, it's a UK company.

        • By hedora 2025-06-214:172 reply

          Looking around, you can get an A series or unlocked iPhone 13 new from a prepaid mvno for $0.

          A refurbished iPhone 13 is $300 on amazon, which is close to the cheapest M ($250). I can’t find new 13’s for sale except via budget carriers.

          (Sent from my 12 mini which is better than all that followed it: $200-ish for excellent condition, refurbished.)

          • By bigyabai 2025-06-214:26

            You're better off getting a preowned Pixel to flash with a secure ROM in this scenario. Getting an iPhone won't help if you if later down the line Apple decides to push an OTA update that forces the same functionality. A Pixel won't protect you from every vulnerability, but it goes much further towards stopping these sorts of attacks than the iPhone does.

            Now hey, I won't suggest that Apple would stoop as low as Samsung has here. But discerning customers might not want Tim Apple's phone if he's been cozying up to a crusty politician that can remember to stay for dinner but can't recall his name.

          • By boramalper 2025-06-215:441 reply

            > A refurbished iPhone 13 is $300 on amazon

            Is this Amazon US? Because even in Ireland, iPhone 16 costs 41% higher than in the US (979 EUR = 1,128 USD in Ireland vs 799 USD in the US).

            • By beagle3 2025-06-2111:07

              Half of the difference is likely VAT, which is included in European listings but the similar US sales tax is more often NOT included in listings.

              (Some US states have no sales tax, but most do)

      • By aucisson_masque 2025-06-215:555 reply

        All Android phone but pixel ones have bloatware preinstalled. Some are worst, like Xiaomi.

        If you don’t want bloatware (spyware), it’s either pixel or iPhone.

        • By burnt-resistor 2025-06-216:021 reply

          The trick is to define "bloatware". Is that known knowns (stuff that's visible), known unknowns (stuff that's added that's not visible), and/or unknown unknowns (stuff added we are pretty sure is there but can't prove)? Apple adds all kinds of carrier-specific crap on every phone, but it's not readily discoverable. Android mfgrs must also because of carrier contracts and country-specific regulatory approval requirements. There's likely little means of escaping this without a BYOD non-Android, non-overseas, non-Apple phone that may or may not exist. Surely there is an obvious, viable alternative somewhere I'm missing that I hope exists.

          • By scarface_74 2025-06-2113:09

            What carrier specific crap does Apple add?

        • By Aachen 2025-06-2212:181 reply

          Wut? Besides that you can uninstall whatever you don't want or even replace the operating system with a bare android or whatever else you want, you're forgetting about Fairphone, Murena, and probably others. I had an apple phone for work once and it's not like it doesn't come with a lot of bloat preinstalled and tries to get your permission to snitch on where you are and what you do. It has toggles for some of the things but you can only do what apple lets you do. Also consider daily use, where you will install third party software to get stuff done: you're not better off with the necessarily commercial software from apple's store than with pretty much anything you can get on f-droid and other open source stores

          Recommending Apple for privacy only makes sense for those who don't actually care and just want the feel-good premium brand

          • By aucisson_masque 2025-06-2222:041 reply

            Just an example. WhatsApp on Android force me to give it the contact permission. Without it, I can’t write to someone or call.

            On iPhone, I can use the app without giving it the permission because if meta were to put up the same bullshit, they would get their app rejected from the store.

            Now, you say you can install barebones Android ? Ever tried it ? It suck, lineageos and other have security issue, often poor battery, lack features and plenty of bugs.

            You could uninstall the bloatware on your stock operating system ? Except that you don’t always know what is necessary and what isn’t. Meta (Facebook) have 3 app preinstalled on Samsung, 1 as user app, 2 as system app. Other are systemized and have extremely convulated name, or even embedded in an actual system app like the antivirus in Samsung device managements that used to send back lot of data to Chinese server.

            Fairphone are expensive and not well built, murena ? They run e/os/, exact same issue as lineageos.

            No really, it’s either pixel (and I’m not speaking of grapheneos, it got more and more issue with play service integrity being forced everywhere) or iPhone. Pick your poison.

            • By nolist_policy 2025-06-238:54

              > Without it, I can’t write to someone or call.

              It works just fine with OpenContacts.

        • By Danjoe4 2025-06-2112:37

          OnePlus has a phenomenal software experience

        • By sabellito 2025-06-218:48

          That's incorrect. Zenphone is a bliss.

        • By bobsmooth 2025-06-225:48

          I like the Samsung apps on my Galaxy.

    • By hkt 2025-06-2113:093 reply

      No need to ditch Android. Fairphone exists: https://fairphone.com

      Their stock android is fine. If you want more privacy, installing e/OS/ is trivial. It blows my mind that anyone is concluding Samsung stuff is worth buying under any circumstances.

      • By subscribed 2025-06-2118:261 reply

        Fairphone has astonishingly bad upgrades and patches policy. Very late, very delayed, not all of them.

        Sure, better than, say, Sony (and as an ex-Sony user I kind of know what I'm talking about), but far from calling it good.

        • By Aachen 2025-06-2212:30

          Every vendor waits a month before sending out security patches, including Google. I've never understood this (with Linux desktops as my context) but so if you have a risk profile where the OS needs more frequent updates but still want to use Android, you need to take extra hardening steps such as limiting what you expose the OS to (from the outside (firewall, turn off unnecessary connections like Bluetooth) and inside (potentially malicious apps))

      • By dotancohen 2025-06-2217:56

        I buy Samsung for the S-Pen. The moment a viable alternative comes along, I'll be the first to try it.

      • By rs186 2025-06-2114:251 reply

        What about people who are not in Europe?

        And for US carriers, you are basically locked out of Wi-Fi calling if you are not using one of the whitelisted devices.

        • By subscribed 2025-06-2118:27

          GrapheneOS if you can live without Google Wallet and hardened Google Pixel (the only secure Android device family to date).

    • By rs186 2025-06-2112:321 reply

      I can assure you that they do the same thing with flagship phones, especially carrier versions of the phones -- speaking from first hand experience. I have seen notifications from apps I have never heard of multiple times.

      That's what I have been thinking recently -- given that Samsung is quietly doing these shady things with my phone, and other annoyances like Samsung forcing Galaxy AI on me (try selecting some texts in a browser or webview) which cannot be uninstalled and the terrible Samsung Pay interface, I am questioning my device choice every day.

      • By chrisjj 2025-06-2120:261 reply

        > Samsung forcing Galaxy AI on me (try selecting some texts in a browser or webview)

        I did. No Galaxy AI.

        • By rs186 2025-06-2121:101 reply

          Open an email from any email client and give it a try.

          • By chrisjj 2025-06-2212:19

            Done (Gmail). Still no AI.

    • By torginus 2025-06-2110:05

      Just buy a 5 year old iPhone - it's likely to be still better than the cheapo phone, and will get longer support as well, while being sold at rock bottom prices.

      I just replaced my iPhone XS, not out of necessity, but I wanted to see what the new ones were like. The 16 is barely better and I was suprised to find just how little the old one was worth second hand, considering it still runs circles around most midrange Android handsets.

  • By grishka 2025-06-213:5214 reply

    The "unremovable" part is inaccurate. While you can't completely remove it because it resides on the system partition, you most probably can still disable it with an adb command:

        adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.package.name
    This command is very powerful as it works for any app, even those that have "disable" greyed out in the settings. I disabled the Galaxy Store on my S9 this way for example.

    • By hysan 2025-06-214:024 reply

      > "unremovable"

      > you can't completely remove it

      Maybe my English isn’t very good but that sounds like the definition of unremovable.

      • By grishka 2025-06-215:431 reply

        To be pedantic, yes, but not in a way that matters. The system partition is read-only. Mounting it read-write would require root and any modifications would break system updates. The apk will still be physically present in the file system, however, none of its code will run and it will be removed from your launcher and installed app list in settings, which IMO still counts as a removal.

        Also, English is not my native language. I feel like I did get my point across anyway.

        • By hmcq6 2025-06-215:512 reply

          It's not being pedantic. Disabling the application does not give me the storage space back.

          If people are paying for upgrades to storage space it's completely reasonable for them to be annoyed by bloatware

          • By grishka 2025-06-216:071 reply

            The system partition is usually the same size regardless of which storage option of the same phone model you get.

            • By bracketfocus 2025-06-216:341 reply

              But if the system partition could be smaller, other partitions could be larger.

              • By grishka 2025-06-216:481 reply

                The system partition is made some fixed size, the same way disk partitioning works on PCs, and never resized, because resizing file systems is still a non-trivial task. It often has some free space too to accommodate future system updates.

                On my 128 GB Pixel 9 Pro, /data is 109 GB. The rest is /system (although `df -h` doesn't show it explicitly, no idea what's up with that) and various other system-related partitions.

                • By bracketfocus 2025-06-2114:552 reply

                  Yes, but if the phone shipped with less bloatware on the system partition, then maybe that partition would be made smaller initially.

                  Meaning the user would have access to more of the phone’s advertised storage.

                  • By Henchman21 2025-06-2120:38

                    You have succeeded in splitting hairs down to the atomic level. Fissionable HN comments!!

                  • By charcircuit 2025-06-221:13

                    Or perhaps there would be less incentive for the OEM optimize for disk space and it ends up taking the same amount of space.

          • By Dylan16807 2025-06-2116:14

            Even with the outrageous prices for phone storage upgrade, an entire gigabyte of inactive bloat would be a $1 impact. It's not a big deal.

      • By sedatk 2025-06-215:03

        There’s an enormous difference between “it can’t be stopped” and “its storage area can’t be reclaimed” though.

      • By charcircuit 2025-06-214:331 reply

        It's in a read only filesystem. You can't modify read only data, but you can choose to ignore it.

        • By ashirviskas 2025-06-2117:471 reply

          Only because it is mounted as one. It is like saying that you can't have your house in pink because it is green.

          • By charcircuit 2025-06-2119:15

            If you modify a file on the partition the device will fail to boot. Your metaphor is not equivalent because it ignores security.

      • By a012 2025-06-214:232 reply

        [flagged]

        • By bryant 2025-06-2121:39

          Regardless of the point, this language is extremely unhelpful here, especially considering op tried with good intent to help people dealing with the issue.

          And there are other analogies too, e.g with certain diseases being "functionally cured" vs "cured." Did the GP use the wrong word? Sure. But making that the sole focus of criticism misses the intent of the GP and the greater value of the whole comment, which instructs people on how to disable it so that it's functionally non-impactful.

        • By themaninthedark 2025-06-2111:34

          ...doesn't sound removed to me, there are still copies sitting on other phones and servers somewhere.

          No, still not removed...the idea and possibility for implementation still exists in people's minds.

    • By scalableUnicon 2025-06-215:111 reply

      I had a Samsung phone and did the same with mine. Wrote a small tutorial here(https://harigovind.org/notes/removing-samsung-android-bloatw...). But even then, these apps will pop right back after system updates and those were becoming more frequent. I got rid of it shortly after, nowadays I use Moto where bloatwares are comparatively minimal.

      • By gblargg 2025-06-219:59

        I've had a few Moto phones and have also been pleased with the fairly stock OS and durability.

    • By kotaKat 2025-06-2112:561 reply

      This does not work on all phones. Some OEMs (like Motorola) leverage the 'nodisable' feature to prevent this and other APKs from being disabled.

      On my 2025 Motorola RAZR 5G, in /product/etc/nondisable are a series of XML files listing carrier and activation apps for Dish Wireless, Tracfone/Verizon Value, T-Mobile, the Amazon App Manager, and two apps provided for finance providers PayJoy (who lock and disable phones for financial product recovery) and one for Claro internally (that operates similar to Payjoy).

      • By grishka 2025-06-236:32

        These affect the "disable" button and the "pm disable" command, I believe. The "uninstall" command can't be prevented from working to my knowledge.

        But then I haven't had any experience with carrier phones. We just don't do that where I live, all phones are sold unlocked for full price and all plans are prepaid.

    • By npteljes 2025-06-2110:182 reply

      Words don't just have a literal, technical meaning. If the phone itself doesn't allow a straightforward, user friendly happy-path for removal, it might as well be "unremovable" in a sense that it is indeed unremovable for most users. "adb shell etc" implies that one has a PC with this tool correctly installed, and many people don't even have a PC in the first place. Then comes the case of installing adb, setting it up correctly, and having a cable to connect the two, enabling debug mode, and doing the thing. This is much more like a service thing, than a do it yourself at home thing. Not much unlike "chip tuning" for cars.

      • By Zak 2025-06-2111:021 reply

        The article claims the app can only be removed with root access, which requires more difficult and technical steps to attain than running an adb command. If uninstalling the app with adb works and doesn't result in the app being promptly reinstalled, then the article has a significant factual error.

        • By Concept5116 2025-06-2116:15

          Except uninstallining the app does not equal removing it, as you claim. Removing it from list of apps to load is not removal. Not to mention it resets back to installed and you have to rerun the command.

      • By grishka 2025-06-2110:36

        This doesn't strictly require a PC. There's this trick with using the wireless debugging feature to connect the phone to itself. You can do it with a terminal app like Termux but Shizuku is a nice GUI that streamlines this process and exposes an API for other apps to use. After a quick web search I found https://github.com/samolego/Canta which is, again, a GUI app that uses Shizuku to uninstall apps via adb.

        I agree that it's not easy, but anyone sufficiently annoyed by these non-otherwise-removable apps who is able to follow instructions should be able to get it done without needing a computer or special knowledge or messing with the command line.

    • By acdha 2025-06-2111:13

      Samsung has an entire PR team who get paid to misrepresent things — you should at least get paid for what you’re doing. You’ve already admitted that it can’t be removed and if it takes some shell work you’re not even sure about to disable it, that almost certainly means it’s coming back on every update.

    • By AzzyHN 2025-06-214:00

      Yes, but for most people (I'd guess 99% or more), they would never know to use the above, and I'm those who did find a guide might have issues using adb on their likely Windows or MacOS machine.

    • By encom 2025-06-219:18

      I had a OnePlus whatever as a work phone in my last job. Every time I used adb to purge the OnePlus crap, it would somehow find its way back. Eventually I settled on disabling autoupdates from the play store, so it was stuck at whatever outdated, and hopefully broken, version the phone shipped with.

    • By dotancohen 2025-06-2217:58

      OK, I see that one can get a list of all installed packages via adb:

        $ pm list packages
      How does one know which are safe to disable? In the sense that there won't be unexpected side effects. Besides, not all the names make clear exactly what the package is for.

    • By mvdtnz 2025-06-215:18

      So you're saying it can't be removed?

    • By subscribed 2025-06-2118:23

      It's not trivial for most and will most likely get reenabled after the firmware upgrade.

    • By catlikesshrimp 2025-06-2119:09

      that doesn't work for every package. Some packages aren't authorized to be disabled this way, i.e. you can't disable them this way. * Some packages can technically be disabled this way, but they cause unrelated issues like the phone wasting processing resources, even overheating the device; or bootloops. * Less relevant, but the package is disabled, but removed. The system can still reenable it, reinstall it, or upgrade it. * Edit: I can't find a way to format this. It shows as a text block.

    • By johnisgood 2025-06-2114:481 reply

      How would one go about using adb? Motorola, stock Android. Do I need to root my phone for this to work or what are the requirements, or how do I perform it?

      • By contingencies 2025-06-2115:052 reply

        1. Install android SDK / android studio on your computer.

        2. Plug phone in to computer using USBC cable.

        3. Answer prompt on phone granting permission to computer.

        4. Run adb commands.

        • By danieldk 2025-06-2120:55

          You also have to enable developer options (tap the Android build number N times) and then enable USB debugging. You can disable USB debugging and the developer options afterwards (keeping USB debugging on is insecure).

          The universal android debloater makes uninstalling packages easier, it has descriptions and categorizes packages by how safe they are to uninstall.

        • By johnisgood 2025-06-2115:184 reply

          Thanks, my issue so far was with the 2nd step, as if my Linux did not recognize my device. I might have a go on Windows if Linux will not work again.

          • By heavyset_go 2025-06-221:231 reply

          • By homebrewer 2025-06-220:021 reply

            Have you tried 'sudo adb start-server' before running any adb commands?

            • By johnisgood 2025-06-220:401 reply

              No. Do I have to?

              • By homebrewer 2025-06-222:001 reply

                Using adb directly runs it under your user, which will probably be unable to access the necessary USB device.

                Starting the server manually under a privileged user is the easiest way to circumvent those restrictions if you don't want to fiddle with udev rules, which is the recommended solution, but is more work.

                • By johnisgood 2025-06-2212:13

                  Thank you! Will keep it in mind! I have higher hopes now.

          • By Izkata 2025-06-2118:431 reply

            It only works for me with one of my two USB ports, and my Kobo ereader has the same issue. Not sure why, best guess is one might be USB 2.0 and the other 3.0

            • By johnisgood 2025-06-2118:46

              That could very well be the issue. We will see. I think I only have 2.0 working right now. I hope it works with 2.0 too. :/

          • By catlikesshrimp 2025-06-2119:031 reply

            Knoppix has an old android adb and drivers. Still recognizes Samsung A and chinese androids and is functional.

            Other dristros surely offer the same support

            • By johnisgood 2025-06-2120:01

              Not sure what the issue was, I did not debug it. I will try again and see if it works or not, and will debug it further if it does not work. Arch Linux or Void Linux definitely should offer the same or more (or better) support.

    • By awaisraad 2025-06-213:59

      Do you know if the same apps remain installed in "Secure Folder" as well?

    • By ehnto 2025-06-216:13

      Don't even need that, you can disable it within the OS app settings.

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