... at least unless you like the idea of computer manufacturers preinstalling keyloggers.

Even though you're not personally affected if the first thing you do on OEM machines is nuke and pave them, it's better if Samsung suffers some sort of backlash for this.

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/sec/2011/032811sec2.html

Just friendly reminder

Never buy a pre-built computers.

Apart from laptops, I don't (incidentally, this article only mentions laptops).

I just read about this on Tom's Hardware UK and was going to post a thread here, but I see that's already been done.

I am constantly amazed by the invasiveness of corporations these days, never mind the carelessness of having customers' passwords floating about out there on some server. I give this a day or two before it hits the mainstream media, and about a month before a lawsuit similar to the one launched against Sony.

I bought a Samsung laptop for my wife last year, so I'm off to do a few rootkit scans. Lovely.

False alarm:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/samsung_keylogger_rumour_debunked/

'The findings are false-positive proof since I have used the tool that discovered it for six years now and I am yet to see it misidentify an item throughout the years.'

'Mohamed Hassan, MSIA, CISSP, CISA is the founder of NetSec Consulting Corp, a firm that specializes in information security consulting services. He is a senior IT Security consultant and an adjunct professor of Information Systems in the School of Business at the University of Phoenix.'

'Testing by antivirus researchers this morning confirmed that VIPRE Antivirus detects 'StarLogger' after creating a 'SL' folder on a clean PC. Even an empty folder with no files in it creates this behaviour'

Ridiculous. A statement like that provided by a 'specialist' for 'security consulting services'... just... wow.

Thank goodness for lazy anti-malware scanners ;)

Yeah, I was skeptical about the original article. Glad to hear that I was correct.