Update terms say Samsung may have sold info to Galaxy users

An update to the privacy policy and terms of Samsung’s services on Galaxy phones indicate that the manufacturer may have sold smartphone users’ information to third parties, including advertisers.

The new privacy policy states that Samsung collects information from devices and social media, among other things, and may resell it to all kinds of third parties, including partner companies, advertising networks and legal offices. This includes search history and browser history. It is unknown whether Samsung actually sells the data on a large scale.

Samsung has amended the terms and privacy policy due to California’s CCPA privacy law, Computerworld writes. Under that law, companies must be clearer about what data they collect, and customers are given the right to access and stop the resale of data. The law only applies to residents of the US state. The law came into effect on January 1, 2020. “During the 12-month period before the CCPA went into effect, we may have sold information from some categories,” Samsung wrote in its amended privacy statement. The company then mentions a number of data, such as the internet history.

In addition to usage data, Samsung also mentions other private data, such as the user’s signature, credit card number and ‘other financial information’. Samsung does not sell these, but the company does use them for personalized advertisements. Samsung Pay recently added an opt-in button with the Do Not Sell option, where users can choose that Samsung does not sell their financial data, XDA-Developers discovered. Samsung has not yet responded to the article.