Thursday, March 31, 2011

PSA: Got a Samsung Laptop?

If so, they might be spying on you:
In the first part of this two-part report, MSIA 2009 graduate Mohamed Hassan told of discovering a keylogger on two different models of Samsung portable computers. Today he continues the story. Everything that follows is Mr Hassan's own work with minor edits.
On March 1, 2011, I called and logged incident 2101163379 with Samsung Support (SS). First, as Sony BMG did six years ago, the SS personnel denied the presence of such software on its laptops. After having been informed of the two models where the software was found and the location, SS changed its story by referring the author to Microsoft since "all Samsung did was to manufacture the hardware." When told that did not make sense, SS personnel relented and escalated the incident to one of the support supervisors.

The supervisor who spoke with me was not sure how this software ended up in the new laptop thus put me on hold. He confirmed that yes, Samsung did knowingly put this software on the laptop to, as he put it, "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."
Not acceptable.  UPDATE!  False Alarm....

No comments:

Post a Comment