Some allegations in Reddit have surfaced against Samsung accusing the company to spy on its customers. Apparently, the storage scanner in the Device Care section of any Samsung smartphone or Tablet is made by a Chinese company called Qihoo 360 that has an ill repute.
The scanner comes pre-installed and there is no way to uninstall it. The Device Scanner function is there to optimize the battery life, and so far it only received positive feedback from its users.
The shady deeds done by Qihoo 360 had attracted the Chinese government’s attention and several court cases have been filed against the company. The shady business goes back to 2017 when the company had revealed the plan to partner up with the government to provide more big data insights, and even in 2014 360’s executives admitted that they would hand over the data to the government if and when asked.
In all probability, the Chinese government can force the company to push an update to the storage scanner and spy on its users and later delete it without a single trace. But there is no way to know for sure.
Additionally, Device Care cannot be disabled in Settings. Other third-party apps such as PD MDM could be used to disable the built-in packages without root but that might cause the battery life to die.
However, before Qihoo 360 came into the picture, another Chinese company called JinShan was responsible for the storage cleaning through the Device Care.
What came as a shock to a lot of Samsung users who had put their faith on the smartphone giant, is the fact that Samsung did not mention anywhere the presence of such spyware in the Initial setup screen.
The users had put their faith in Samsung thinking that it is better than the Chinese smartphone manufacturers. So, the users are trying to catch the attention of Samsung and have put forth some demands regarding the involvement of Qihoo 360. Samsung could partner with any other company for the same issue, or if it is not feasible, the users are urging Samsung to make the Storage scanner optional.
