Comments on How to limit Samsung Customization Service data collection

Thank you, that's helpful. But I would have liked to read what it actually does, like, what features it enables. I'm quite used to the privacy rhetoric, and I don't think a company like Samsung would ever divulge, given current and probable future geopolitics, why I use a certain dating app, or how much I use any phone during work, or whatever else.

I mean, not letting a company know about those things about you is a good reason for being attentive to your privacy. You may want to share or to not share your data, but whatever you do, you shouldn't do it mindlessly. But I feel like you only told one side of the story. Samsung doesn't want your data to ruin your life. They want your data, well… partially because some services require it (I'm assuming… that's what I came here to find out) and mostly to train algorithms.

You do have more reason to care if you are or intend to be a public person, though, because even though the risks of your data being personally used against you are still low, there's too much at stake.

It doesn’t do much at all. To quote some sections of the article:

> Samsung says SCS provides you with “personalized content based on how you use your phone and devices”. In reality, it only provides a handful of minor features […]. Samsung has gated some enthusiast and basic features behind users opting into sharing data with the company. […] The gating is somewhat porous. Some apps let you enable a gated features while you’re opted in, but doesn’t turn them off again if you later disable the Customization Service.

It’s a shameless data grab so Samsung can resell your data. Samsung doesn’t need your data to provide its services. I’ve seen no examples of a SCS feature that can’t be delivered on-device without sending your data off device.

The only exceptions are services like the weather app. However, you don’t need an account to do a simple location-based weather query. Samsung could just send your location to its weather service without an account or other persistent ID and have that server return the weather for that region. The account is only there for recording your location over time and to bind it to an identifier to resell that information.

Thank you very much for this. It's absurd that Samsung fails to provide adequate app function information so users have to go off the grid to get the info. I am going to link this into my review in the Galaxy store so other users can get the same, and VALUABLE, information