> The company plans to grab four categories: your sleep, your medications, your medical records, and your cycle tracking details
So you buy a device but you can't effectively use half of its features because you'd also have to agree to send them your medical records? Ok then if I refuse, will they refund 50% of the device price since now it's not usable any more?
And file a complaint... As that breaches a dozen or more EU laws. If a lot of people do it in all the countries, it becomes a national issue.
That is the only way you fix things, and yes, we have had multiple successes with companies taking the piss. Even Samsung can not escape as their have officies in the EU and sell products there.
For the folks outside the EU, ... Its a harder fight and you need to look up your local agencies.
I had a ~2008 vintage Samsung phone with a fingerprint sensor that gave your blood oxygen level (SpO2). One day it told me something similar, I had to agree to send them data or I couldn’t use it. So I never used it again, but yeah they have been abusing their costumers a long time.
This is they same company whose tvs take pictures of what you are watching and send them back to Samsung.
> I really feel like "grab" is quite condescending
By all means, let's use a more appropriate term, like "abuse" or "misappropriate". It's not sufficiently condescending for a company that's trying to train AI on people's private health data.
Do you think those services are “free”? If you want cloud storage and syncing, it comes at a price. If you’re not paying with money, you’re paying with your privacy and freedom.
We are not required to permit every possible business model to exist. Companies are desperately trying to get their hands on every piece of data they can get to train AI, hence the abominable use of "opt out", which is already horrible even without the added bait-and-switch coercion of "or we'll make the device you already purchased worse".
"pay or consent" stunts have already been ruled illegal under the GDPR. This goes even further than that, where you don't even have the option to pay.
> I really feel like "grab" is quite condescending to a company (Samsung) that provides services at scale (upon/after consent) to help you.. "be better" (simplified..), with direct customization and tailoring.
The headline as described sounds to me like they're violating GDPR by tying to force "consent" for a not-strictly-necessary-for-functionality use of health data. The European Data Protection Board has repeatedly stated that consent is (generally) not considered to be "freely given" if there is a significant detriment for refusing it or if the user has no genuine choice.
Note however that caveat: as described. There may be some more details which make this not unlawful. Also, actually deleting your data if you don't consent is the kind of thing GDPR requires.
Bought a Galaxy Watch 7 two years ago, the hardware is good and One UI on the watch itself is also quite good (and the last major update improved it) but Samsung Health is such a shit app. Constant ads for some "courses" or videos and things I don't care about. Downloading my personal data doesn't even work, it sends me right to the browser with an error message that I'm "not logged in correctly" and it wants access to all my pictures & videos (seems like a wrong permission prompt there but when I decline it it also fails with "we need access to all your photos & videos". Why? Just send me a download link via email or use SAF and let me pick a download location).
Thanks to this article I also noticed the UI was redesigned. At least I could keep my layout but it didn't work like it should, it added some useless cards. It also asked about new "optional" data sharing which I of course declined. There is now a notice that my data wasn't backupped to my Samsung account the last 3 days (???) and the data synchronization doesn't work, the buttons do nothing, it just says "disabled" even though everything is enabled... typical Samsung shitware. Haven't noticed anything with AI training (there is no option) but I'm also in the EU.
In some way they are telling that they respect your privacy. Or they have your data (and then do something with it, now or later), or no one will.
They could provide some Google-style takeout to get your data before deletion, but that may not have any meaning or practical use without their devices and software.
Completely agree. Or maybe, just like most products in tech -- they are currently en route to "take out" style data deletion... and it's being released shortly.
This is like Google Ultra for personal accounts. I signed up to see what it was like and then assumed I would be able to disable training on my data as a paid customer. The only way to disable training on paid personal accounts is to disable history (no chat logs) which makes the service much less useful for me.
For Google Workspace accounts that use the Ultra plan you can disable training while retaining history. I didn't bother signing up again. It is user-hostile.
Something I appreciate about Samsung phones is that having a Samsung account is completely optional. I've never had one. If I accidentally click on one of the dumb AI features I'm not even allowed to use it without an account.
no, in fact gdpr requires that they get consent before they process the data.
They are not preventing people from accessing the data, only indefinite storage as i understand. They may claim that storage is needed for the processing (which might make sense, they want to train on the whole time series).
Recital 11 of the GDPR says that consent must be "freely given", and recital 43 says (in part):
"Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case, or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance."
Yes but that consent must be given freely. There can't be undue pressure. Unfortunately this part is not well defined but it looks like the AI training part is not required to deliver the service to the specific user so I do think that if challenged it will be ruled afoul of GDPR.
I think Facebook lost a similar lawsuit recently where you had to accept that they can use your data or pay to access the site. And it was found illegal in the EU.
The problem is that it takes years and users don't wait for years. There should be a way to harm these companies more on the EU level.
I was under the assumption that because of GDPR (which is in effect..).. or current "end-user metadata storage" best practices.. if you (a website/or app) didn't immediately disclose to the user what data is being used,stored, and why it is -- then you shouldn't store it at all.
If you agree that the world needs better examples today, then Samsung has definitely showed one.
Yes, please - delete my health data. I want my health data - I didn't want Samsung or anyone else to have it unless I provide it. And even then, you can't keep it - you can look at it. It's mine.
I actually don’t know why people are always surprised when this happens, it’s not your data anymore no matter whatever regulations are there. The other day I reactivated my apple music to get a specific shazam song (I don’t use it anymore or any SaaS for that matter, have my navidrome server for years), but little to my surprise, all my playlists and songs are gone, deleted, everything as if it’s a new account! I thought it’s a glitch and googled it, turned out there are a LOT of people who had all their years of music wiped out for not having the subscription for two weeks only.. so yeah, always own your stuff, especially if you pay for it.
Am I reading this wrong? It sounds like, short of self-hosting your health data, this is the best of both worlds. Avoiding zombie data retention and avoiding AI? Where do I sign?
That reminds me of a story by a former coworker of mine, who had a xing account and repeatedly asked them to not send me him ads and spam e-mails. They ultimately closed his account.
Some companies are so dead set on doing this shit, that they don't even have mechanism in place that would enable them to act upon you opting out. It is a sign of dysfunctional companies. You can also observe this, when you send companies a GDPR request for deletion and they do eeeeverything to not have to go into their shitty system and delete the data, because that would require them to do manual work.
>You will not be able to sync health data with your Samsung account and your health data will be deleted unless retained pursuant to applicable law. If retention is required, we will erase it as soon as the required retention period ends.
Don't threaten me with a good time.
I'm so tired of tech companies shoving AI into everything, everywhere.
I'm not an expert on the matter, but to my knowledge Samsung aren't health practitioners and aren't beholden to HIPAA laws for data that was (presumably) voluntarily provided to them. Is this scummy? Abso-fucking-lutely. But as far as I'm aware they have a lot of freedom when it comes with data collected with permission from users. Obviously this is something that should be addressed/regulated.
It certainly is. HIPAA binds healthcare providers and those entities who get data from them. Samsung is not bound by either of these, unless it is sourcing the health information from, like, your doctor, and not from your watch.
Are we sure this isn’t the text for the “consent to process health data” toggle that is on the same screen? I don’t have a Samsung phone handy to check
Apple has default E2EE on health data, which I respect. But they need to take iMessage backup out of Advanced Data Protection and make it default E2EE. Messages are just as sensitive, iMessage is effectively not E2EE if most users are using it with server-side encrypted backups to iCloud. Apple of all companies should be able to make a reliable E2EE that wont cause data loss.
So you buy a device but you can't effectively use half of its features because you'd also have to agree to send them your medical records? Ok then if I refuse, will they refund 50% of the device price since now it's not usable any more?
https://www.europe-consommateurs.eu/en/who-we-are/about-us/e...
And file a complaint... As that breaches a dozen or more EU laws. If a lot of people do it in all the countries, it becomes a national issue.
That is the only way you fix things, and yes, we have had multiple successes with companies taking the piss. Even Samsung can not escape as their have officies in the EU and sell products there.
For the folks outside the EU, ... Its a harder fight and you need to look up your local agencies.
This is they same company whose tvs take pictures of what you are watching and send them back to Samsung.
It's definitely not just Samsung. As bad as this is. The problem is bigger than just them.
By all means, let's use a more appropriate term, like "abuse" or "misappropriate". It's not sufficiently condescending for a company that's trying to train AI on people's private health data.
"pay or consent" stunts have already been ruled illegal under the GDPR. This goes even further than that, where you don't even have the option to pay.
How can you be "condescending" to a company?
The headline as described sounds to me like they're violating GDPR by tying to force "consent" for a not-strictly-necessary-for-functionality use of health data. The European Data Protection Board has repeatedly stated that consent is (generally) not considered to be "freely given" if there is a significant detriment for refusing it or if the user has no genuine choice.
Note however that caveat: as described. There may be some more details which make this not unlawful. Also, actually deleting your data if you don't consent is the kind of thing GDPR requires.
Thanks to this article I also noticed the UI was redesigned. At least I could keep my layout but it didn't work like it should, it added some useless cards. It also asked about new "optional" data sharing which I of course declined. There is now a notice that my data wasn't backupped to my Samsung account the last 3 days (???) and the data synchronization doesn't work, the buttons do nothing, it just says "disabled" even though everything is enabled... typical Samsung shitware. Haven't noticed anything with AI training (there is no option) but I'm also in the EU.
- Samsung deletes your sensitive health data
- Samsung does not use this data to train some AI
:-)
They could provide some Google-style takeout to get your data before deletion, but that may not have any meaning or practical use without their devices and software.
For Google Workspace accounts that use the Ultra plan you can disable training while retaining history. I didn't bother signing up again. It is user-hostile.
They are not preventing people from accessing the data, only indefinite storage as i understand. They may claim that storage is needed for the processing (which might make sense, they want to train on the whole time series).
"Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case, or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance."
The problem is that it takes years and users don't wait for years. There should be a way to harm these companies more on the EU level.
If you agree that the world needs better examples today, then Samsung has definitely showed one.
Some companies are so dead set on doing this shit, that they don't even have mechanism in place that would enable them to act upon you opting out. It is a sign of dysfunctional companies. You can also observe this, when you send companies a GDPR request for deletion and they do eeeeverything to not have to go into their shitty system and delete the data, because that would require them to do manual work.
Tracking-free link: https://www.neowin.net/news/samsung-will-delete-your-health-...
Don't threaten me with a good time.
I'm so tired of tech companies shoving AI into everything, everywhere.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dumber+than+a+second+coat+of+paint...