Posted by bundie 3 hours ago
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.