ⓘ Daniel Romero
The Samsung Health app functions similarly to Apple Health or Google Health as a hub for health data. Among other devices, smartwatches like the Samsung Galaxy Watch8 ($237 on Amazon) sync data with Samsung Health, where it is then stored in the user’s Samsung account. This data can subsequently be synced with third-party apps such as Strava. However, it appears that Samsung will no longer be taking data privacy quite as seriously in the future.
As How To Geek has learned, some users of Samsung Health have already received a notification stating that their data will be used to train AI models in the future. According to Samsung, this also applies to highly sensitive data, including sleep and cycle tracking, heart rate, clinical diagnoses, prognoses, test results, treatments, and medication. Although this data could hardly be more sensitive, it may not be anonymized, as the message lacks any indication to that effect.
In addition to AI models, Samsung employees will also have access to this data to manually review the AI’s results. If users do not consent to this use of their health data, Samsung will just delete all health data from the app. Anyone who has used Samsung Health as a hub for health data up to this point will potentially lose data collected over years regarding workouts, illness histories, and sleep. Despite inquiries, Samsung has not yet commented on whether it will be possible in the future to use Samsung Health without completely sacrificing data privacy.
ⓘ Samsung
Since 2009 I have written for different publications with a focus on consumer electronics. I joined the Notebookcheck news team in 2018 and have combined my many years of experience with laptops and smartphones with my lifelong passion for technology to create informative content for our readers about new developments in this sphere. In addition, my design background as an art director at an ad agency has allowed me to have deeper insights into the peculiarities of this industry.
