KOREAN HARDWARE GIANT Samsung has firmly denied claims that two of its laptops were sold complete with pre-installed spy software, saying it is a case of mistaken identity.
Reports said two of its laptops – R525 and R540 models – were bought and discovered with a pre-installed keylogger. Called Starlogger, this software has the capability to log your keystrokes and take screenshots. There was also a claim that Samsung technical support admitted the company put the software on the laptop to monitor its performance.
Of course, this caused a major uproar, with some believing that Samsung had “done another Sony”. A few years ago the Japanese corporation installed malware on peoples’ computers to find out more about their audio CD listening habits.
But in an official statement, Samsung claimed that it was all due to a false positive scan. It said, “Our findings indicate that the person mentioned in the article used a security program called VIPRE that mistook a folder created by Microsoft’s Live Application for a key logging software, during a virus scan.”
“The confusion arose because VIPRE mistook Microsoft’s Live Application multi-language support folder, ‘SL’ folder, as StarLogger.”
There does seem to be some sort of misunderstanding, as it’s hard to believe that Samsung would have been stupid enough in 2011 to stick malware onto its computers in the name of market research.
Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2038997/samsung-denies-selling-laptops-spy-software
