What’s striking is how often these ‘small’ surveillance tech stories trace back to the same state-aligned ecosystem. When Israel does it, it’s treated as a complex security issue. When another ‘bad’ country does the same thing, we immediately call it espionage. And almost on cue, the discussion drifts anywhere except the uncomfortable fact that it’s the same ecosystem from the same country showing up again.
it’s a tough infosec situation because the tel aviv-haifa corridor in israel has an enormous amount of computer science R&D going on that gives US companies a competitive advantage.
for example, annapurna labs in haifa develops the technology behind AWS’s nitro cards, which run the hypervisor, block storage, and networking in every EC2 server.
Is it though? US and EU telecom companies pulled the plug on Huawei products, which were deeply integrated in all of their setup, as soon as someone said they may be spying or remote disabled by China. It was expensive, sure, but they pulled the plug. I don't recall any concrete evidence of backdoors etc to be found, but trust was gone.
And that's the difference I think; US and Israel have high trust, they are aligned in ideals and strategy and the like.
Fair enough. I guess it's fine to be spied on to make sure US companies have that competitive advantage you mention. As its all in a good cause, I'll take the Samsung phone!
I mean, it's literally the same thing that happens when past genocides are bad, but when they happen today from an ally of the west... "it's complicated". Except this time happens on the technological side rather than the humanitarian one
I recently bought a cheap android device because I needed to test something on Android. The setup was about 3 hours of the device starting up, asking me questions, installing apps I explicitly told it not to, and then all sorts of other apps and OS updates trying to do their thing seemingly at once. I wasn't even transferring data, just a brand new phone, new google account.
What a horrible experience you get with some providers and phones.
It's to the point that I think there should be some sort of regulation that involves you getting a baseline experience on the OS rather than a bunch of malware out of the box.
I remember back when the iPhone came out, this was perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of it, at least to me. We were so used to phones coming with crap on them and tightly coupled to the carrier. If the carrier didn't want something on the phone, it never got there. So Apple comes along and says "Hey, AT&T, we will make you the exclusive carrier for the iPhone iff you leave the entire experience under our control."
There were lots of downsides to that deal, of course, but I appreciate that it broke the carriers' exclusive control over mobile phones.
Rather refurbished, because those are longer on market thus development of custom ROM (like LineageOS) is more likely. And of course you save a lot of money.
Sounds like the average carrier locked Samsung device experience in the US. Oh you didn't want Clash of Clans installed? We'll reinstall that for you next OS update. Running updates through carriers was a serious mistake.
Running remote updates in general was a serious mistake. Other manufacturers are no better and give you all kinds of crap for their income streams at the expense of your convenience whilst claiming the opposite.
The last time I saw an update that just fixed security bugs and improved performance was... never.
I was wondering why this thankfully hasn't been my experience until you said "carrier locked"... I always buy unlocked. Does that really make a difference?
I haven't bought an android device for a few years, but the last time I did, it was also a very cheap one for testing. I chose an "Android One" to avoid all these issues. Is something like that still an option?
Your best bet might be one of the Pixel "a" series, which are Google's budget-oriented models. Stock vanilla Android with as little bloat as you can hope for.
Sounds like a Samsung phone... no end of dark patterns and pushing Bixby AI and whatever else. And then once you have the phone set up you get to spend the next 10 minutes uninstalling a load of pre-loadded apps that you didn't want.
Fortunately Android is a pretty diverse range and Samsung is just one player. I had much more user-friendly experiences with Fairphone and Motorola.
Cheap devices get subsidized by shitty adware. The cheaper the device, the more likely that it's full of terrible adware.
Consumers often have a choice, at least between "filled to the brim with crap" and "a modicum of crap", by choosing between buying their phone from a store or from a carrier. Carriers have better deals but shovel their phones full of the worst apps you can imagine. Still, people will buy the crap-filled experience that makes you want to tear your hair out because they like the idea of scoring a better deal.
Nothing like unadulterated greed combined with short-sighed consumer behaviour at scale to drive a market segment into an awful race to the bottom.
What's a better word here? Adverts cost the consumer, however I'm sure the consumer doesn't get equal recompense. Theoretically a SmartTV with adverts costs less money ("subsidised" due to price competition), but is the consumer actually ($,time) better off?
The costs are invisible and the consumer cannot actually measure the costs (the vendors do measure profitability but this is not legible).
I reckon most people are terrible at judging the value of their own time (especially children and retirees).
My guess is, those auto installs is exactly how they keep the costs down, by subsidizing the cost with getting paid by companies to auto-install garbage.
It's the same with Smart TVs, they've gotten so cheap because of all the other slimy stuff the manufacturers do, like sell your watch data, or pre-install apps.
This is not a valid cause. They spend insane amounts of money on advertising and also make insane amounts of revenue. Don’t think “them keeping the cost down” is relevant in this context.
Nah its the corporate greed and disregard for avoiding amoral behavior at the first place, since clearly its punished much less than rewards are (just look at all the slaps on the wrist of FAANGs and similar), then followed by race to the bottom with the price.
Economies of scale do bring costs of everything much further than stealing user's data can, but good luck explaining some long term vision to C-suites who only care about short term bonuses.
I suspect the apparent reduction in price on these devices is a lot less than what they earn from the slimy stuff.
But the premium devices (especially TVs) are starting to do this too now via software updates. I had to turn off a bunch of crap in the settings on my LG CX TVs some time ago. Now they are just off the internet and can only connect to my NAS.
I kind of like Motorola in the cheap android phone space. I have a moto-g stylus in my pocket now, and it's big (which I like), has a heaphone jack, and has an sd-card port. I thought I'd like the stylus, but I rarely use it.
It pre-installs some games, but you can uninstall them. The only thing it forces on you is a weather app which you can deactivate but not uninstall.
Hopefully one day we not only have open software, open hardware but also reproducibly guaranteed secure systems. Now I don't have any idea how this could be verified (and no, Microsoft's "Trusted Computing" is not what I have in mind), but I hope we'll see to this eventually.
"Decentralized governance" is just feudalism. What you need is a re-envigoration of democracy. Democracy works, but we have to engage with it positively, both as citizens and as politicians.
we've alreaaaay seen that decentralization is an abstract, butnot a reality.
There will always be a move towards centralization when a project gains enough converts because the bulk of concerns are exactly the same but we don't have n+1 people willing to do the necessary legwork to secure.
As such, just like REST apis and their N+1 query problem, forcing everyone to have a security conscious posture is never going to happen.
You absolutely need centralized authorities; what the real argume is about is how that authority is selected, changed and intermediated. The same way we argue about how a stable RAFT algorithm operates.
Move on from this "decentralization is all we need" argument. It's failed and failing.
It will be excluded from any popular OS and will end up a niche thing that no one will use. The issue is the hegemony of big tech companies over the regulations to shape it however they like, and in return they provide the surveillance to legislators.
Has no-one bothered to reverse engineer the app and see what it's actually doing before launching into hundreds of words of breathless conjecture?
If not, this article and almost every comment on this submission is a colossal waste of time.
This is supposed to be a technical website full of inquisitive hackers, right? Then perhaps try to examine the facts instead of guessing and bullshitting.
From Stuxnet to Pegasus to the 2024 pager attack, Israel has a history of leveraging its tech sector to advance its national security aims through clandestine means (this is not unusual: so does the US, and so does China). If you're a country with not-so-friendly relations with Israel, the company being founded in Israel is absolutely pertinent.
Which _Israeli_ companies were used for Stuxnet or the 2024 pager attack? NSO is not the same as the company from the article since it's explicitly a cyber company.
> The presence of an Israeli-origin technology component on Samsung phones in WANA countries poses additional problems. Several nations in this region legally bar Israeli companies from operating, and in light of the ongoing Israel–Palestine conflict, the preload of an app tied to such a company becomes even more contentious.
So yes, the presence of Israeli software is a problem in many countries, and may even be illegal.
> the program was found to be quietly invasive as it allows the installer to install programs on the user’s device without permission. It circumvents the user validation process and successfully bypasses multiple security checks, including antivirus programs
I agree that the headline “controversy” is manufactured.
That's not the controversy based on the article - it's arguing that because the app is Israeli in origin, it may run afoul of local BDS laws thus another reason for AppCloud to be removed from local device, which is notable because the AppCloud app only appears to be installed on African, Asian, and MENA Samsung phones, where the bulk of countries with BDS laws exist.
The article doesn't appear to take a side one way or the other in the conflict, it's just listing a potential compliance issue.
There is no such thing as BDS laws, only anti-BDS laws.
Some muslim countries boycott Israeli-made products,
But since Israel is a tech powerhouse only behind the US, almost every tech is Israeli-made at least partially, so again, trying to enforce any boycott is stupid.
you probably need to throw away your phone. or something. because never mind of it apple/qualcomm/android/etc - one of R&D centers that all companies have in Israel developed part of it.
Seems reasonable. Same way "Russian" companies are shady. Doesn't matter if they do something inane . This is really basic geopolitics that only had a short respite... Like less than 30 year period as cold war slowed. This is very normal.
Why do android phone companies load up the bloatware on their phones? Why can't they provide a plain vanilla version of android and let users to choose the stuff?
The same reason this happens/happened on Windows laptops. The hardware provider gets money to pre-install this software. They can then offer the phone at a lower price with a higher margin.
AppCloud is not only in India. It is on some OEM version of the phone in the US as well.
How did I know? My phone had random notifications promoting apps that I had never heard of, and I couldn't find a way to disable them. Eventually I found and removed it via adb.
Any chance you can remember the package name? It's not mentioned in the article or ones it linked to, and I can't quickly find it on my phone. There is the vaguely named "application recommendations" that going by a quick search should be com.samsung.android.mapsagent
Readit News
for example, annapurna labs in haifa develops the technology behind AWS’s nitro cards, which run the hypervisor, block storage, and networking in every EC2 server.
And that's the difference I think; US and Israel have high trust, they are aligned in ideals and strategy and the like.
For context: https://www.eunews.it/en/2025/11/05/italian-journalist-fired...
Remind me again of all the help Israel has provided the USA/the West that they are considered such a great (the greatest, in fact) ally?
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What a horrible experience you get with some providers and phones.
It's to the point that I think there should be some sort of regulation that involves you getting a baseline experience on the OS rather than a bunch of malware out of the box.
There were lots of downsides to that deal, of course, but I appreciate that it broke the carriers' exclusive control over mobile phones.
The last time I saw an update that just fixed security bugs and improved performance was... never.
Fortunately Android is a pretty diverse range and Samsung is just one player. I had much more user-friendly experiences with Fairphone and Motorola.
Consumers often have a choice, at least between "filled to the brim with crap" and "a modicum of crap", by choosing between buying their phone from a store or from a carrier. Carriers have better deals but shovel their phones full of the worst apps you can imagine. Still, people will buy the crap-filled experience that makes you want to tear your hair out because they like the idea of scoring a better deal.
Nothing like unadulterated greed combined with short-sighed consumer behaviour at scale to drive a market segment into an awful race to the bottom.
What's a better word here? Adverts cost the consumer, however I'm sure the consumer doesn't get equal recompense. Theoretically a SmartTV with adverts costs less money ("subsidised" due to price competition), but is the consumer actually ($,time) better off?
The costs are invisible and the consumer cannot actually measure the costs (the vendors do measure profitability but this is not legible).
I reckon most people are terrible at judging the value of their own time (especially children and retirees).
It's the same with Smart TVs, they've gotten so cheap because of all the other slimy stuff the manufacturers do, like sell your watch data, or pre-install apps.
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Not really, they've gotten so cheap because the individual components they are made of have become much cheaper due to economies of scale.
The same thing happened with computer monitors, and those don't ship with the bloatware.
Economies of scale do bring costs of everything much further than stealing user's data can, but good luck explaining some long term vision to C-suites who only care about short term bonuses.
But the premium devices (especially TVs) are starting to do this too now via software updates. I had to turn off a bunch of crap in the settings on my LG CX TVs some time ago. Now they are just off the internet and can only connect to my NAS.
I'm looking at HMD or Motorola.
It pre-installs some games, but you can uninstall them. The only thing it forces on you is a weather app which you can deactivate but not uninstall.
Hopefully one day we not only have open software, open hardware but also reproducibly guaranteed secure systems. Now I don't have any idea how this could be verified (and no, Microsoft's "Trusted Computing" is not what I have in mind), but I hope we'll see to this eventually.
There will always be a move towards centralization when a project gains enough converts because the bulk of concerns are exactly the same but we don't have n+1 people willing to do the necessary legwork to secure.
As such, just like REST apis and their N+1 query problem, forcing everyone to have a security conscious posture is never going to happen.
You absolutely need centralized authorities; what the real argume is about is how that authority is selected, changed and intermediated. The same way we argue about how a stable RAFT algorithm operates.
Move on from this "decentralization is all we need" argument. It's failed and failing.
If not, this article and almost every comment on this submission is a colossal waste of time.
This is supposed to be a technical website full of inquisitive hackers, right? Then perhaps try to examine the facts instead of guessing and bullshitting.
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> The presence of an Israeli-origin technology component on Samsung phones in WANA countries poses additional problems. Several nations in this region legally bar Israeli companies from operating, and in light of the ongoing Israel–Palestine conflict, the preload of an app tied to such a company becomes even more contentious.
So yes, the presence of Israeli software is a problem in many countries, and may even be illegal.
> the program was found to be quietly invasive as it allows the installer to install programs on the user’s device without permission. It circumvents the user validation process and successfully bypasses multiple security checks, including antivirus programs
I agree that the headline “controversy” is manufactured.
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The First thing that popped into my head, was
- is this a problem because of bloatware in general? Or…
- because its Israeli bloatware?
If the latter, I would understand your discomfort because of past security intrusions by Israeli companies.
But not if it’s just „IsRa-HeLl bAd“
The article doesn't appear to take a side one way or the other in the conflict, it's just listing a potential compliance issue.
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- Not use Intel processors, as many are developed in Haifa
- Not use a firewall. It was invented in the IDF.
- Not use Waze. It's Israeli.
- Not use thumb drives. Invented in Israel.
- Not eat cherry tomatoes. Israeli development.
The list goes on and on, but I must add - if you ever suffer a serious head or stomach injury, tell the medics to not use the Israeli bandage.
Best step up to your words and throw away your phone then.
All major tech companies and chip manufacturers have R&D and design centers in Israel.
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I think a lot of this might come down to carrier deals though.
Best bet I would imagine is to buy an Android device not through a carrier and make sure it has the necessary wireless modem bands
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How did I know? My phone had random notifications promoting apps that I had never heard of, and I couldn't find a way to disable them. Eventually I found and removed it via adb.
These scumbags.
Apparently only for the at&t variant.
for t-mobile