Is the Samsung “peeping Tom” allegation pure BS – or just mostly so?

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I’ve read it all. That paragon of technical insight, England’s The Sun, reports that “Samsung’s ‘peeping Tom’ smartphones can watch what you do on the
[See the full post at: Is the Samsung “peeping Tom” allegation pure BS – or just mostly so?]

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I’d give it the same credibility as if the story was in the National Enquirer.

Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie

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lurks about

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Well in this age of “Snooping” nothing would surprise me in the least and if theres a way some one will find a way to use it, But given that the average Sun reader generally finds great difficulty getting past page 3 they have to make the headline salacious enough to …ahem peak thier interest and anything tech inclined or remotely in depth is relegated to the ignored bit between page 3 and the Sports page at the back lol

PS I had Better not visit the UK any time soon after that, only “incognito” lol

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Tin in the foil.? …

https://insights.samsung.com/2017/01/10/three-ways-beacon-technology-personalizes-the-in-store-experience/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/homaycotte/2015/09/01/beacon-technology-the-what-who-how-why-and-where/#40b60f2d1aaf

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Use an adblocker, Better Privacy, uBlock Origin and NoScript. Problem solved.

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What snooping? My trusty old nokia still works perfect, it’s small in size and battery lasts far longer albeit that needs replaced every year or so. If it still works, I use it. Didn’t fancy the idea of being a slave to the phone charger either.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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Bill C., HiFlyer, Kirsty

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YES, Same here down in Oz. I have a voice only 10y/o Samsung flip phone. It serves its purpose and I have survived without needing a Smartphone sofar and do not see any future need for me to get one anytime soon. I somehow think Smart phones are making users dumber, ie: losing some skills that they had and for the younger users in recent years would struggle to survive without the Smartphone, as they have not gained skills that the Smart phone has now stopped the need to obtain. Maybe I am just a Luddite lol

Cheers

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SueW, Noel Carboni, HiFlyer

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anonymous wrote:

YES, Same here down in Oz. I have a voice only 10y/o Samsung flip phone. It serves its purpose and I have survived without needing a Smartphone sofar and do not see any future need for me to get one anytime soon. I somehow think Smart phones are making users dumber, ie: losing some skills that they had and for the younger users in recent years would struggle to survive without the Smartphone, as they have not gained skills that the Smart phone has now stopped the need to obtain. Maybe I am just a Luddite lol

Cheers

Me too ! ! ! I’m VERY satisfied with antique flipper.

I know, opinions are like butts. Everyone has one and they ALL stink. I just do not have the need to have my entire life in the palm of my hand or in my back pocket. Not making fun of those that do. To each their own.

Dave

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SueW, Noel Carboni, HiFlyer

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…losing some skills that they had and for the younger users in recent years would struggle to survive without the Smartphone, as they have not gained skills that the Smart phone has now stopped the need to obtain.

Yeah, it is disheartening to see any human with their face buried in the screen. There is no shame in being a flip phone owner or other form factor of “dumb” feature phone.

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If you can’t blind ’em with brilliance… The whole privacy / telemetry thing is about your device – computer or smartphone or tablet or IOT thingy – sending in data to various places to help someone else achieve their business goals.

Speaking of keeping aware of tracking and beacons that people tacitly allow…

The article is right, it’s done by most all web sites. Sometimes to excess.

What’s that single transparent pixel, for example, being displayed by PayPal on this very web page for?

These URLs are not in here to directly deliver content to readers:

• https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif
• https://z-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/onejs?…
• https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?…
• https://www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js
• https://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?…

They’re in there to deliver business success to Woody indirectly through partnership with PayPal, Amazon, and Google to track you and I and to send us ads, so that Woody can afford to run this site and we can all continue to read what Woody (and one another of us) write here.

These things can be blocked but if everyone were to do it the whole business model of “put interesting stuff online and get the people of the world to pay you indirectly by visiting your site and being tracked” stops working. I’m not sure that’d be a bad thing.

Me, because personally I don’t believe in ad-supported computing, I donate occasionally when I find a site worthy (this site is one of the few), and I block ads and tracking.

-Noel

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Elly, David F, woody, wdburt1, SueW, Kirsty, HiFlyer

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I have been thinking for some time that “technology” is being used to obscure a flight from more demanding and expensive marketing methods and a reversion to older, industrial-style promotion.  Marketing at its best consists of finding solutions to problems consumers wish to solve, or at least to inform them of something they need to know.  Open a 1920s business self-help book about selling, and it’s all about how to promote the product.  Industrial-age marketing!  Put that product in front of as many eyes as possible!

Sound familiar?

Promotion is hollow and devoid of substance, the busy-ness of people without anything to say.  It is totally self-centered.  Not so long ago we still heard the phrase “gotta move the iron,” most often in establishments with an expensive inventory, like car dealerships.  Ever seen one of those irritating “sell-a-bration” TV commercials, along with that awful Seventies tune?  It’s all about them–their need to meet their sales quota, or clear the lot before the new models arrive.

I would be less opposed to the trend if it were not so associated with cheap and tacky.  If, often enough to be noticed, it actually grabbed my eyeballs for something worthwhile.  Amazon comes close sometimes.  All the spying and data gathering is based on the theory that sheer repetition–promotion–will make the sale.  Technology, starting with junk phone calls, has made it so inexpensive to flood the world with worthless messages that doing so still pays.

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Even with the ads and all that tracking (PayPal comes with the “donate via PayPal” logo), donations, and affiliate links, this site makes less than $1,000/month. That’s enough to keep the lights on, but it wouldn’t support any kind of superstructure.

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Elly, jelson

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Not surprising. But that it pays at all does reveal that the information gathering and ad pushing IS worth money to the companies that piggyback on any given site.

I can never shake the feeling that if someone has paid to get information about me, they expect to extract value from me with it. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my transactions, where value is exchanged, out in the open.

Please don’t take any of this as a criticism of your site or business plan, Woody… Yours is a member of the most noble pursuits online, for which the Internet shines: You deliver value by actually helping people.

-Noel

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Elly, Jan K., MrJimPhelps

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In general their does seem to be a obsession with gathering information on what we do. A class action lawsuit is occurring against Bose and its software having ability to monitor what you listen too. I think the argument is from these companies is the more we know about you the better we can make our products. I also believe ad companies are wanting to target consumers rather then a broad coverage of ads that may or may not be relevant. Of course the problem is, should this be a opt in sort of thing or should it be default? My problem with all of this is we are seeing so much of it from so many directions for so many reasons. All of which boils down to knowing way more about us. I think it will get worse before something is done to curb the appetite for our information.

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_Reassigned Account wrote:

I think the argument is from these companies is the more we know about you the better we can make our products.

That is an argument for why they want to know more about you. It is not an argument for why they should spy on you whether you want them to or not. And it is certainly not an argument for their spying on you and not letting you know that they intend to spy on about you.

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samak, SueW, HiFlyer

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It would be great if the system actually worked. Right, I mean…

I’m imagining that they’d figure out it’s a waste of time and bandwidth ever to send me any ads, because I’m not influenced by advertising. I do the polar opposite of what “they” suggest, and when I need something I go figure out what the best product is. On my terms.

Digital TV with the ability to skip commercials (and before that the mute or volume control), and blacklists / ad blocking for computer work, are wonderful things – without which I’d most likely watch MUCH less TV and surf the Internet similarly.

I just wish that everyone would think like this. The quality of life would certainly go up.

Everyone just stop being sheep and marketers will stop treating us like sheep because there’s no money in it.

-Noel

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Noel Carboni wrote:

Everyone just stop being sheep and marketers will stop treating us like sheep because there’s no money in it.

There are two kinds of sheep: 1. Those who know they are sheep and are OK with that; and 2. Those who don’t know they are sheep.

There are two kinds of sheep who don’t know they are sheep: 2a. Those who would be OK with being sheep if they knew they were sheep; and 2b. Those who wouldn’t.

The class 1 sheep and the class 2a sheep aren’t going to stop being sheep, so marketeers will always treat us like sheep. Unfortunate, but true.

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Would advertisers/marketing , Tech manufacturers, App and OS Developers stoop so low as to use technology to secretly stalk you? YES, and they are getting pretty good at it. Snooping, stealing and selling is tech’s business model. They feast on users who have a cavalier attitude toward privacy and security or who are unaware of the default permissions set on a device or in the software.

Tech FYI: The Tinfoil (aluminum foil) hat dissipates radio frequency electromagnetic radiation against a wireless modem but amplifies frequencies in the 2.6 Ghz range (allocated for mobile communications and broadcast satellites). In other words, the hat is tracking and transmitting (your inner thoughts) not blocking them. The home microwave would do a better job of blocking the transmission, however it has side effects.

I do not know if the article in the Sun is BS (partially or completely). I’ll ask my buddies at MIT what they think. Hopefully I get a response.

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HiFlyer

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The problem with many of these articles is there is germ of truth behind them. With the correct software pretty much any device can be used to spy on the user. The only limits are the actual hardware available and whether the software is installed. Whether Samsung is actually do this and if so why I do not know.

One of the holy grails of advertisers is target ads based on known user preferences. The belief is the targeted ads will be more effective than more generic ads; an assertion that I doubt has been rigorously proven. However, these preferences change with time as one’s situation and interests change. Also overly targeted ads also run the risk of failing on important aspect of advertising: making potential customers aware of your product or service. What one is unaware of one will not use or buy.

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HiFlyer

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lurks about wrote:

What one is unaware of one will not use or buy.

Y’know, the funny thing about that is that I’ve never met anyone who literally had “too much money and not enough stuff” because they just didn’t know what to spend their money on.

Against all odds, people somehow have always figured out what to buy when they needed or wanted something.

There are those who would say, “See? Advertising has worked!” To that I would reply that people have been figuring out how to get what they wanted LONG before the Internet or “modern” marketing started to try to mislead them.

Who said it was okay to mislead people “in the name of business”?

-Noel

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Noel Carboni wrote:

These URLs are not in here to directly deliver content to readers: …

Fortunately for those of us who don’t have the technical expertise to block them on our own, uBlock Origin blocks them all.

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Don’t forget, you are paying for the ad budget every time you buy a product.

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Noel Carboni

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The last paragraph in this story raises some interesting questions.  A Rolling Stone journalist was using an iPhone at the Ariana Grande benefit concert following the recent bombing in London.  He was allegedly making some notes in his Apple Notes app when he was stopped and questioned about something he had typed into his phone … hmmmm …

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/live-reviews/ariana-grandes-one-love-manchester-benefit-our-report-w485769

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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They could have been using the camera technology built into their heads to notice what he was doing with his phone.

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For people reading that who don’t get the joke, I’m talking about them using eyesight.

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I really hope you are correct, because the alternative is truly Orwellian …

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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I hope so too…, but it would not surprise me if the alternative was true.

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JohnW wrote:

The last paragraph in this story raises some interesting questions.

anonymous wrote:

They could have been using the camera technology built into their heads to notice what he was doing with his phone. For people reading that who don’t get the joke, I’m talking about them using eyesight.

JohnW wrote:

I really hope you are correct, because the alternative is truly Orwellian …

This is what the original article said, so everyone can draw their own conclusions.

As I made my own way to the tram, I wrote in my Apple Notes app, “Helicopter hovering overhead,” which to me signified that the fans were being watched over. Then two policemen stopped me and asked me who I was with and whether I’d written anything about a helicopter into my phone, without explaining the technology of how they’d read my Notes app. After a friendly back-and-forth, they looked through my bag, checked my ID and business card and determined I wasn’t a threat. “You have to understand, tensions are running high,” one of the men said with a smile and a handshake, allowing me through the gate. Manchester was secure tonight.

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There was once an age where Privacy was taken serious and our Privacy wasn’t for sale!

In this day and age… marketers and business large and small believe they have the right to all of our information.

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