Samsung may remotely kill all unreturned Galaxy Note 7's | Hacker News Reader

Samsung may remotely kill all unreturned Galaxy Note 7's

thenextweb.com

37 pointslisper21 comments

"And btw, we have a remote kill switch that we can use against any of your devices made by us, at our whim. Be grateful that we're using it for Good...for now."

There's nothing in that scenario that could possibly go wrong, is there? #gwx #greatpr

(Also, "kill switch" for devices that may or may not spontaneously self-combust is just about the worst possible choice of word)

I would be super happy if I lost all of my data without my consent. If they backed it up on their servers beforehand, I would be angry they violated my privacy without my acknowledgement. If they disable my phone during an emergency, I'd be outright pissed off.

This is a lose-lose situation all around.

Shouldn't whatever plans you have to mitigate data loss in case your phone gets destroyed in an accident be adaptable to deal with this situation?

Because every consumer of commodity smartphones does that, don't they?

Even though it is not explicitly suggested by the article I would imagine that the phone maintains its emergency contact features as well as any data in storage to transfer later. The idea is to discourage someone from using their phone as actively as possible until they send it in for the swap.

In many other circumstances it would certainly be an unwelcome precedent, but, this probably isn't as nefarious a hidden kill-switch as you seem to be implying.

The vendors already have and regularly use the capability to push remote software updates, including to low level components like the bootloader or radio baseband. An update to the bootloader which turns it into a display stating "this device is an explosion risk, return it for replacement immediately" and shuts the phone down wouldn't be far-fetched.

I understand the urgency, and I'm not saying they would use it for Evil ;)

Just that saying "we have means to brick devices, and we will use them in anger" is not going to improve their reputation.

Technically, any phone OEM that pushes automated updates has a remote kill switch. On Android, you could even bypass the OS update by updating one of your core apps remotely and having that handle it. So, yes, every phone OEM has a remote kill switch.

I wonder if/how this is covered contractually. Seems like the kind of thing that should be required to be explicitly called out.

Worth noting that the only source for this article is a reddit post.

[speculated based on a reddit post]

Its probably a liability issue. If their phone for example starts a fire on a plane that is probably a billion dollars+ right there not to mention the PR nightmare.

I completely agree that what you say is their motivation - but is a little nuts that this is acceptable. Managing their PR nightmare shouldn't be cause for destroying property/data they don't own. Even if their cause is more to the point of preventing injury - - I don't know for sure where I come down on this - its a step that can be taken for the public good - but I also feel like allowing this to happen just means that more companies will build in these kind of capabilities and substitute proper testing before launch.

I really believe before its over with we are going to have to resolve this idea that we are renting or licensing hardware/software from companies. It make sense in some scenarios, but to pay $700 for a piece of hardware that ultimately you don't have final say in just doesn't seem like its going to be tenable in the long run. I'm not sure what kind of scenario its going to take for the public to push back - but I hope it happens.

> to pay $700 for a piece of hardware that ultimately you don't have final say in just doesn't seem like its going to be tenable in the long run

Unfortunately, it's the brave new world. We can't put the genie back into the bottle. Every device has hardware and software from hundreds of sources, there are security holes which need to be patched up timely, it's hard to do it without a centralized update system, so we have to give up control and blindly trust the providers to protect us from hackers.

The trend of losing privacy is going to accentuate. We have to develop a new way of thinking and living in a panopticon society, because there's no way to return back to 1980'es. We need to develop ways to preserve freedom and creativity in this perfect surveillance world.

How would a social network protect anonymity, reject spam and detect organized manipulation, at the same time? What would it take to bootstrap it? How could we have phones that leak less information about us?

If they already issued a recall, why would they be liable for users who refused to return their device?

I would think it'd mostly be a PR nightmare and they wouldn't be liable financially for any damages since the device has been recalled. Headlines like "Samsung device causes airplane to go up in flames" would really take a hit on Samsung's bottom line because of one of their customer's stupidity.

OTOH, "well, they said they'd use a kill-switch, and then the gadget went boom, near damn killed me" would probably be the worst-case scenario: hence the killswitch would need to be a full and complete bricking (is that even possible with current-gen devices?)

Someone would likely claim they didn't try hard enough.

As mentioned in another thread, it's lose-lose. They're on liability hook if the device burns, they're on hook if someone's data is lost. I would probably agree that bricking the devices is safer.

This story has no source. It is at best a rumour.

I would thing that to be illegal. Destruction of property, breaking into a computer system, etc. Anybody deciding to do that should be brought to court.

Yes, you'll get a better one in return, but what if I want to keep mine, for whatever reason (for its low serial number, because I spent lots of time and money to decorate the casing), or I it's impractible or impossible to return it now (say I'm on a long trip in the wilderness, and want to use it as a GPS to prevent getting lost)?

Even if they promise to bring a replacement anywhere in the universe for free, they have no business destroying it if a customer refuses that offer.

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