For years, Samsung has shipped its Galaxy M, F, and A series smartphones in India with a little-known app called AppCloud. Despite its name, AppCloud isn’t a cloud storage service. It’s essentially an app-installer that surfaces third-party app recommendations during device setup.
On new Galaxy devices in these lineups, AppCloud appears as part of the initial onboarding and forces users to choose whether they want to install certain apps before setup can be completed. You can postpone this by choosing the “later” option, but the app continues to push a persistent notification until you finish the selection process or disable it entirely.
For most users, AppCloud has long been regarded as little more than nuisance bloatware, a side effect of Samsung’s need to generate revenue beyond hardware margins while competing with aggressive Chinese smartphone brands in India.
But findings by the non-profit SMEX from earlier this year suggest AppCloud may not be as harmless as once assumed.
AppCloud expansion into Asian and African markets has sparked scrutiny
Since 2022, Samsung has also been preloading AppCloud on its A and M series phones in several West Asian and North African (WANA) markets. This rollout has triggered privacy concerns due to AppCloud’s ties to ironSource, a company founded in Israel and now owned by US-based Unity.
While AppCloud can be disabled, it is difficult to remove without root access. Furthermore, its privacy policy is not easily available online, raising questions about transparency, user consent, and what kind of data the app may collect.
ironSource itself has a controversial track record. The company previously operated an “InstallCore” program that became infamous for installing software without clear user permission and for bypassing security warnings, behavior that resulted in widespread criticism and blacklisting by several anti-malware tools.
Regional sensitivities make things more contentious
The presence of an Israeli-origin technology component on Samsung phones in WANA countries poses additional problems. Several nations in this region legally bar Israeli companies from operating, and in light of the ongoing Israel–Palestine conflict, the preload of an app tied to such a company becomes even more contentious.
... continue reading