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In exchange for selling them repair parts, Samsung requires independent repair shops to give Samsung the name, contact information, phone identifier, and customer complaint details of everyone who gets their phone repaired at these shops, according to a contract obtained by 404 Media. Stunningly, it also requires these nominally independent shops to “immediately disassemble” any phones that customers have brought them that have been previously repaired with aftermarket or third-party parts and to “immediately notify” Samsung that the customer has used third-party parts.

Aaron Perzanowski, a personal property law expert and professor at the University of Michigan Law School, told me “Most consumers would be very surprised to learn that their personal information and details about their devices are being shared with the manufacturer. And I doubt there is any meaningful disclosure of or consent to sharing that data. So this looks like a substantial and unexpected invasion of consumer privacy.”

“This is exactly the kind of onerous, one-sided ‘agreement’ that necessitates the right-to-repair,” Kit Walsh, a staff attorney at the Electronic Freedom Foundation and right to repair expert told me. “The data collection is excessive. I may not have chosen to disclose my address or identity to Samsung, yet an added cost of repair—even at an independent shop—is giving that information up. In addition to the provision you mentioned about dismantling devices with third-party components, these create additional disincentives to getting devices repaired, which can harm both device security and the environment as repairable devices wind up in landfills.”

#privacy