Sunday
This is an accessibility and a legal issue. The accessibility issue is serious, the legal issue is very serious and affects every user of Samsung services.
Accessibility first: During a recent trip abroad, I tried logging in to my Samsung account on my laptop (using firefox on ubuntu 24). The system detected my location, and gave me a login page in the local language which I do not understand, with no option to change the language. This means it was impossible for me, or anyone else in the same situation, to log in. It should be a basic requirement that you should be able to choose your preferred language.
Then, once you log in, you are presented with the so-called "terms and conditions" which you are supposed to accept. It is patently obvious that Samsung has complete contempt for their customers, since these consist of pages and pages of unintelligible legalese. It is clear that the company expects their users to accept these without reading them. This is clearly illegal behaviour on the behalf of the company since it is in blatant violation of the principle of informed consent which underlies the GDPR. It is no excuse that other companies are also in equal blatant contempt of basic legal principles. If customers are supposed to agree to something, it must be possible for them to read and understand what they agree to.
This is bad enough, and it might be marginally defensible if this was a once-in-a-lifetime process where the sacrifice of time and maybe seeking assistance from a legal expert could be justified.
However, updates to "terms and conditions" are regularly presented, and Samsung now makes it impossible to use certain apps on their phones before "agreeing" to these. You would expect these updates to clearly outline and summarise, in ordinary language, what has changed. But no. Absolutely no such information is given, and instead the entire unintelligible document is presented once again. To really dispense with any pretence that any informed consent is implied, on my mobile phone I am presented with a notification "Tap to agree to new terms and condition". That is, Samsung by their own choice of words clearly expects us to agree without reading what we agree to, and deliberately makes it almost impossible to make any informed decision.
Other companies do outline the changes when they update their policies. There is nothing, except for contempt for their customers and for fundamental principles of law which prevents Samsung from doing this.
Sunday
Sunday
Sunday
