Samsung Account - refusing to accept me declining their T&Cs?

[Andeh13]

I have deeply fallen out of love with Samsung, as they increasingly give me apps I don't want & can't refuse. Message enhancements, edge software, smart things etc - best I can do is disable/hide them. There are over a dozen of them.

The latest range of updates from Samsung is now forcing me to accept the new Samsung Account T&Cs. I signed up for a Samsung account ages ago, but have stopped using it & am logged out after I found no benefit & due to the above.

However, I am totally unable to block the notifications, pops up etc reminding me to reviewing the T&Cs and accept. I have tried everything, but they still persist.

Surely if I reject the T&Cs, I should not be forced to endure it popping up every 10mins asking me to accept them? Basically the only way to prevent this is to accept? Surely they cannot be allowed to do this?

(Having just got confirmation from my bank my banking app will still work with a rooted phone, I am going to go down this route - the principal above still stands though)

[Saracen]

They almost certainly are allowed to require you to sign up to have a Samsung account. The T&C change is no doubt a result of having to adapt to the GDPR from the EU.

However ... they shouldn't be able to prevent yoh using the device without a Samsung account.

That said, it's pretty much what Googld do. My last two (Samsung) tablets effectively demanded a Google account to activate. If there was a way around that, I never found it and it sure wasn't for lack of trying.

Eventually I sorta got round it by several steps, including (but not limited to) :-

- giving Google a one-use auto-destructing email address that hasn't been used since

- disabling every data tracking thing I could find, starting with location services

- only ever accessing things via encrypted anonymising VPN

- never putting ANY personal info, at all, on or througb the device.


Of course, doing all that severely limits what can be done with the device, to the point most people probably couldn't go far far and still find it useful. I can, though.

My "no personal info" I mean never, under any circumstances, banking info, so no online buying, or paid-for apps. Also, no email, no messaging, no bi-directional comms wogh znyone that knows me. There's more (MUCH more), but you get the drift.

And all to avoid giving Google any informayoon I can possibly avoid.


It is this ever-encroaching, and ever-harder to avoid, privacy intrusion that is driving me slowly but inexorably closer to simply giving up having internet access at all.

[spacein_vader]

I have deeply fallen out of love with Samsung, as they increasingly give me apps I don't want & can't refuse. Message enhancements, edge software, smart things etc - best I can do is disable/hide them. There are over a dozen of them.

The latest range of updates from Samsung is now forcing me to accept the new Samsung Account T&Cs. I signed up for a Samsung account ages ago, but have stopped using it & am logged out after I found no benefit & due to the above.

However, I am totally unable to block the notifications, pops up etc reminding me to reviewing the T&Cs and accept. I have tried everything, but they still persist.

Surely if I reject the T&Cs, I should not be forced to endure it popping up every 10mins asking me to accept them? Basically the only way to prevent this is to accept? Surely they cannot be allowed to do this?

(Having just got confirmation from my bank my banking app will still work with a rooted phone, I am going to go down this route - the principal above still stands though)

It's a nice piece of circular logic:

You can't continue using a Samsung account without accepting updated terms. I imagine the alternative is to close the account.

But then you can't use the phone without an account.

You can appeal to ICO on the grounds your consent is invalid as it isn't given freely as your phone is effectively held hostage until you do. You'll probably win, but it'd take months which doesn't help in the short term.

If Samsung can argue that the account must be linked to the phone for either a statutory legal reason (unlikely,) or a technical reason that would be impossible to work around (rather than because they've put a hurdle up that requires it, still unlikely,) then they could move to a legal basis that doesn't require consent.

[ik9000]

it'd be an interesting one to write to which? about and see whether they, with their greater resources, have been doing any looking into this. They were pretty damning of smartTVs a while back so I know they have concerns about this kind of thing.

[peterb]

It seems to be becoming more common - installing win10 is next to impossible without a Microsoft account, and while you can use Apple devices without an icloud account, it does severely limit the functionality if you are using multiple devices.

Saracen has already mentioned Google who may want data for profiling/targeted advertising.

[spacein_vader]

it'd be an interesting one to write to which? about and see whether they, with their greater resources, have been doing any looking into this. They were pretty damning of smartTVs a while back so I know they have concerns about this kind of thing.

In my experience Which are useless at anything technical.

It seems to be becoming more common - installing win10 is next to impossible without a Microsoft account, and while you can use Apple devices without an icloud account, it does severely limit the functionality if you are using multiple devices.

Saracen has already mentioned Google who may want data for profiling/targeted advertising.

MS do make it clear they'd prefer you to use an MS account, but I didn't find it too tricky to dodge it.

As for Apple and multiple devices, that'll be true of any vendor I'd expect. Id see that as a legitimate purpose to be honest as for syncing between them I can't see how you could do it without some form of account.

[ik9000]

you can install win10 withuot a windows account. At least it let me back in the day. Sadly it's all gone pete tong since I had to install my work office licence on it, and now it;s linking everything to that.

[peterb]

you can install win10 withuot a windows account. At least it let me back in the day.

I think you can - but its difficult!

[jim]

I think you can - but its difficult!

I did it last week and it was quite easy, but it is set up in such a way to strongly discourage you from doing so. I doubt anyone would proceed via that route unless they were quite determined.