Why Thieves Don’t Want Your Samsung Phone - DTNS 5149

0:03This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, November 19th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, we give you important context, and we try our darndest to help each other understand. Today, thieves don't want your Samsung phone, and the EU publishes the details on its changes to GDPR. One you need to know, one you want to know. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Sarah Lane. Let's start with what you need to know with the big story. So, a lot of people have been having opinions about this before it came out, but I thought it was good to wait to talk about it until it's actually published. That is the changes to GDPR that are being proposed by the European Commission.

0:45It published its digital omnibus with proposed changes not only to the 2018 GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, but also to the AI Act of 2024. So for those who don't know, currently GDPR requires that you need a specific lawful reason if you want to process personal data. When you process it, that data has to be encrypted. The user has a right to get a copy of it, and the user can ask you to delete their personal data. And the big one, consent to process any personal data must be freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous. That's why you have so many cookie pop-ups that are very complicated.

1:27Well, they want to change that. They want to make it easier to share, anonymized and pseudonymized data sets. That's where you change the names. You don't just remove the names. That would allow processing of special categories of personal data for ensuring bias detection and correction subject to appropriate safeguards. So that's where you're going to see a lot of the arguments about what does that actually mean? Is this, we shouldn't reduce protections at all, et cetera, et cetera. They also want to remove pop-ups for non-risk cookies, like counting site visitors or the one that logs you in, that keeps you logged in, so you don't have to log in every time you load that webpage.

2:10Those can trigger a pop-up and they want to exempt those and say, you don't need to get informed consent on those cookies. They also want to change it to simplified yes or no. Get rid of all the legalese, just say, do you want us to keep the cookies or not the cookies until such time as browser makers all adapt to let you set a cookie preference in your browser natively without having to use some kind of plugin and then apply that to all websites. And the proposed rule would make websites respect those browser settings. There's your cookie changes. Sarah, before I get to the AI rules, Anything, anything light your hair on fire with that one?

2:51Well, listen, I, I, at this point, and I'm sure I'm not alone here and I do care, but I, you know, it's like every time I load a website where it's like, it's except cook. Yes. Except, except all. Yeah. Cause I just, yeah. Like it's, I'm like, I'm not being hurt by this now. Depending on who you are and what you're doing on the internet, you might have different feelings about this. One question I did have was anonymized versus pseudonymized. Why would there be a distinction there? You know, I don't know exactly. I imagine that pseudonymized has its uses where you want to process things in a way that needs a name in the end data, right?

3:35Yeah. And so you don't want to identify that it's Sarah, but you want to identify that this data all came from the same person. And so you wouldn't even necessarily make up another name. You could just say 12, right? It's a pseudonymous. But isn't that anonymized? No, anonymized would be like, we don't know where this data, we don't know which data goes with which data. I gotcha. I gotcha. Yeah. I assume that's the difference. Just a term I hadn't heard before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here are the changes to the AI rules that are proposed, or at least some of them. Simplified documentation for small companies.

4:08I didn't find a good definition yet. I know it's in there of how small, but basically saying small to medium enterprise versus your big companies like Google. It probably depends on how much they make per year. Yeah, or employee size or something like that, I'm sure. They will allow personal data for training generative models. They still have to get consent and all of that stuff. Before, it was not allowed at all. Now they will allow it under this proposal. Grace period extended for rules governing systems that pose serious risks to health, safety, or fundamental rights. Those were all supposed to go into effect this coming summer, 2026.

4:47That changes to when the European Commission determines that, and I quote, the needed standards and support tools are available. In other words, when you can comply with these new, more strict rules, then we will enforce it within a maximum of 16 months. Oh, so they can't just say forever. I can't just kick it down the road. We can't. We don't know how to do it. You've got 16 months. They would give an exemption to high-risk monitoring for systems that are used in a business that does high-risk stuff, but the system itself isn't high-risk. So an example I came up with is your company uses robots to make weapons.

5:24You want to monitor the system that is governing the robots, right? But maybe the payroll system doesn't need to be monitored in the same way because that's not high risk. That's just paying people. I guess that was sort of an oversight. And they want to centralize oversight of all of this into one office, the EU AI office. One other thing that's in here is the European business wallet. This is just a way to digitize operations that are still done in person now. So it let businesses do some signing and timestamping and sealing of documents and then transfer those documents and communicate them, not only with public administrations, but with other businesses as well.

5:59Just a unified interface for that, as well as a unified interface for reporting security incidents to make that easier to do. All right. These are all just proposals. They now go to both the European Parliament and the European Council, and they have to be approved by both. European Parliament follows parliamentary procedure. The European Council is made up of one representative from each of the 27 member states. In both of these organizations, both of these governmental bodies, you could have modifications made to this. And I'm going to tell you right now, modifications will be attempted. There's a lot made right now in the criticisms of this, that this is bowing to U.S.

6:43government pressure. There's also pressure from U.S. tech companies, which operate in Europe. Europe often has got delayed rollouts of AI features because the companies say they're trying to comply with all these regulations, and the proposal is meant to kind of reduce the red tape. It's not just from outside Europe, though. Former Italian prime minister and former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi has pushed for these changes. Multiple countries, however, are already objecting to the changes. They were objecting before they were even published. And you definitely will see civil groups like Max Schrems and the NOIB, none of your business, European Center for Digital Rights, scrutinizing this and bringing lawsuits.

7:24They've been very successful in bringing lawsuits to protect personal rights in the EU. So the short version is this is not going to be settled anytime soon. You can understand all these proposals, but don't worry about the things changing or don't hope for the things changing, depending on where you sit. Yeah, I mean, when you were going through the proposed changes, many of these changes, I was like, yeah, that makes more sense. Yeah, that makes more sense. I mean, not that the law as it currently stands is bad, necessarily, I think it was made in good faith, but it is complicated, overly complicated.

8:01And so to streamline some stuff, and like you said, you know, eliminate some red tape where it can be eliminated makes perfect sense to me. This also feels like something that is going to, we're going to be talking about this for years. Yeah. Allowing personal data to be used for training is going to be the hottest of the hot button issues here. And I feel like in order to get that one in there, they offered the cookie simplification. Those will probably be popular, not just because it makes it easier, but also because a lot of companies say yes or manage preferences. Managed preferences sounds complicated.

8:39I didn't get time for that. I'm just going to say yes, right? Because that's easier. So making it yes or no suddenly is like, oh, well, no, I don't want you to do that. And I think a lot of privacy advocates support that. They certainly support browser level settings that you can just set once and have applied everywhere to make it easier on everybody. Websites aren't going to like that as much because they won't be able to collect as much personal data. I expect people will try to leave those in and strip out a lot of the AI stuff. Yeah. One other thing in the EU that's related here, Tuesday, the EU designated 19 companies, including AWS, Google Cloud, Bloomberg, IBM, London Stock Exchange, Tata Consultancy from India, Orange, the Telco, and Microsoft Azure as critical third-party computing providers for finance.

9:27Under the EU's Digital Operation Resilience Act, or DORA, this means three of the EU's financial regulators would now be able to supervise these companies directly for risk management and governance policies to make sure that they're protecting financial information. This follows the news earlier this week that the EU is looking into whether cloud services should fall under the Digital Markets Act. A lot of these are the same companies in both cases. So more scrutiny coming there as well. In this case, it's meant for securing financial transactions. I love it. It's like cookie setting is going to get easier.

10:02Many companies are going to have more trouble with us. Yeah, more paperwork. We'll reduce paperwork over here. We'll add some over here. Yeah. Well, no paperwork is required for you to be a patron of our show. DTNS is made possible by all of you listening right now. We want to give thanks to Matt Zaglin, Jeff Wilkes, Tim Deputy, and our brand new patron, Febreze. Yay! the heroes of the day. Welcome Fabrice. Good to have you. Yeah, good to have you. All right, there's more to talk about. Let's get to the briefs. London Centric tells the story of a man named Sam who was robbed of his phone, camera, and knitted hat.

10:44Shortly after they were taken by an apparently eight-person group, one of them returned his phone and said, don't want no Samsung. Another man named Mark said his Samsung phone was taken by a thief on a bike. who looked at it and then threw it to the ground. The theory here is that iPhones hold more resale value, making the Samsung phones less desirable. Both Samsung and Apple phones have solid anti-theft security, so there's nothing really going on there. Android includes theft detection lock that uses the accelerometer to detect a snatch and grab and then locks the phone. Yeah, but some of these aren't even high velocity that would set off the accelerometer, uh you know like like the one where they they took his knitted hat poor guy and then they didn't give that back but gave the samsung phone back that's that's pretty ironic as well yeah listen and and again it's like you know this is one publication you know telling a story but uh the the idea that uh and justin robert young actually has a good story about this um of getting his iphone stolen back in the day.

11:49The idea that a very high-end Samsung phone is undesirable is, I mean, maybe on the black market it is, but it's not undesirable for people who want nice phones. Yeah. And it's all about resale value, right? You're going to have to spend a lot of time getting past these theft detection and locking mechanisms that the phones do. And they're very good, but nothing's perfect. Nothing is impenetrable. So I guess the thieves are like, if I'm going to spend all that time unlocking this phone, I want to get a good amount of money back. I can do that for an iPhone. Samsung's only going to get me 10 quid.

12:25Forget it. That's not worth my time. And so through no fault of Samsung's, you know, or no fault of Apple's even, they are able to say, you know what, that's a Samsung phone. Maybe people should start putting Samsung stickers on their iPhones or get cases that make their iPhones look like it's a Samsung. Right. I mean, Samsung should be proud of itself, really. I don't know if there's any resale value to the company as far as just, I don't know, cachet. But yeah, I mean, Apple should not be proud of the fact that people want to steal its phones more often because then they can be thieves. I don't – I mean, actually, if I were Apple, I would be a little proud.

13:11Like ours are so valuable, even the thieves. Yeah. Yeah. It's like stealing people's sneakers. Like those are cool sneakers. Yeah. Nobody's going to steal your sneakers, Mary. They're stupid. Yeah. Anyway, I thought it was – it's very anecdotal, but there are enough stories. We only related two of them. There's a few others in the London Centric Post about this. a hilarious one about Spotify, where a guy was trying to a con where he said, hey, do you have Spotify? I want to show you a cool song, right? And you think, oh, this person has music on Spotify. And then as soon as he shows him the Samsung phone, he's like, oh, never mind.

13:46And walks away and he overhears like phone's dead in it. Like, oh, he had a Samsung phone. It's not worth pulling the con on him and trying to take his phone it's also i mean there are other phones in the world besides iphones and and and samsung branded phones but yeah i wonder what the google pixel yeah yeah like if you've recently stolen a phone uh let us know feedback at dailytechnewshow.com we never read last names uh the cloud flare outage on tuesday came and went but the explanation from cloud flare as to why it happened is kind of interesting. Cloudflare uses a bot management system with machine learning that scores bot behavior to determine if the bot should be blocked or not.

14:30Now, it does this for a lot of reasons, DDoS, etc. But one use of this score is to stop AI companies from crawling a site without the site's permission. Cloudflare is experimenting with a pay-per-crawl system that relies on this identification. The scoring model relies on a configuration file and an unexpected change in the size of that file triggered an error. The explanation on Cloudflare's site, if you want to know, is very good about how that size grew. The short version is they wanted to let users access more metadata. And in doing so, they actually doubled the rows in that configuration file accidentally from the bot management system, which made the file larger than the allocated memory.

15:12The thing to remember is they had a bug that made the file larger than the memory allowed. And that was like, we can't do that. That's an error. Any traffic processing that relied on the bot module, which is most traffic, returned a 500 error code. And then we got the worst outage for Cloudflare since 2019. Seems to have mostly affected sites worried about AI crawlers. Some sites were able to route around it or change providers or such. But if they weren't trying to stop the bots from crawling them, then this wouldn't have been the problem. Just goes to show you that in our modern age, you know, there's just that one file.

15:54Whoops. Yep. Double the columns. Now everybody goes down and nobody knows why. And there, you know, a lot of hand wringing about like, oh, this was, you know, hackers and, you know, all that stuff. And Cloudflare being like, listen, here's what happened. Yeah, and a very detailed explanation of it. If you're interested in like, well, wait, why was there a database error? Why were they writing? They actually go through like all of the calls and systems and the assumption they made about the writing where they didn't think they needed to, you know, narrow down the database. And it turned out they forgot about the bot module, which is kind of new.

16:29So maybe that's why. But yeah, interesting thing there. And I'll let you draw your own conclusions about this. But I found it interesting that the new need to address crawling for AI led to a system being created. And that system was the one with the bug. Yeah. People at Cloudflare probably relieved today and some people very embarrassed as well. TikTok is adding some new features. New features on the screen time management page include an affirmation journal with more than 120 positive prompts, a breathing exercise module, a sound generator that plays a calming sound like ocean waves, for example.

17:14TikTok says we want you to be comfortable. There are also badges for teens that reward them for not using TikTok for multiple hours at night and also using meditation tools and setting and respecting a screen time limit. In the Manage Topics section of settings, in addition to options to reduce topics like sports or dance if you're just not into it or you've had too much, there's now one called AIGC. That stands for AI-generated content. Like other topics, you can choose to reduce or increase the amount of AIGC that you want to see in your For You feed. The new setting would show up in the coming weeks.

17:54TikTok is also testing an AI-generated watermark system that only it can read, which would be harder for users to remove. Yeah, this is the second time we've seen a platform come out with the idea of letting you reduce AI-generated content. The other was Coda, the music system that lets you turn it off in your music recommendations and music streaming. TikTok saying, we know there's a lot of slop out there. You want to cut it back? Here, here's the setting. I mean, they are not going to be able to identify every single thing that is AI generated. Yeah, there's going to be errors. They're following COPPA2 and they're using watermarks in their own systems that create AI generated stuff.

18:34So, you know, they could cut back some, but it's not going to be a magic something, magic switch for getting rid of it all. I also, you know, I do, well, I was about to say I applaud TikTok. I don't know if that's the right term for it, but I think it's a good idea for TikTok and many other platforms out there. TikTok isn't the only one to provide safeguards, especially for younger people or people who just feel like, you know, I'm doing this too much. I'm getting too addicted to this type thing. I get that. At the same time, it's just it's so weird to me that a company who it which is built on, you know, endless scrolling and engagement and not turning it off and not putting the phone down or, you know, whatever you're doing, you know, is actually doing this.

19:31I know that the company is like, well, we don't really want to do that, but we're going to do it so that people get off our backs about us being a harmful network. Yeah, it's just that. It's a funny situation to be in. It's in their own self-interest to make it so that people will want to use your platform because you're being responsible about it, right? You get more users that way. They've done the math, and they understand that this is worth it. Or maybe it keeps governments from coming at them and restricting them even further. That too. And my guess is they also probably lose users who are like, I can't stop using TikTok, so I'm not going to use it at all.

20:11If they can use some of these tools to be like, hey, let's help you not overdo it. So at least you stick around. So, you know, I haven't I haven't really, I don't know, played around with any of any tools that many platforms have to sort of curb engagement. But I will say TikTok and I'm not trying to call out TikTok specifically because TikTok has some great content. But it is the one platform where when I get going, I'm like, I can't stop. And so I don't actually use it very often because I already know ahead of time. It's like eating ice cream. I'm like, I can't stop. So I just won't start. And you're probably not alone.

20:50Like that is not an unusual thing. And TikTok knows that. So they're like, well, if we can do something to make Sarah feel safe using it, you know, and she can have just a spoon of ice cream instead of the whole pie. Maybe I'm not saying all of you who eat one spoon of ice cream. I have nothing in common with you. Send us a video of you eating one spoon of ice cream, just throwing the rest. away just one yeah and then you're fine you're like yum that's all i do yeah eat one potato chip meta announced it will comply with australian law and start blocking users younger than 16 from accessing instagram facebook and threads by december 10th that's the deadline users younger than 16 have already started receiving pop-ups and notifications in the apps notifying them that their accounts will be deactivated uh and meta will stop allowing new signups from younger users on December 4th.

21:40So I don't know, sign up now like you can. You got until December 4th, then you're going to get kicked out again. And on December 4th, they will begin deactivating existing accounts. So if you have an account now, December 4th, you might lose your account, and you'll definitely lose it sometime between December 4th and December 10th. However, Meta says it's going to use multiple age verification methods. It's going to request additional information if the age is in doubt. And it said the systems have a significant margin of error and it expects it will misidentify some users both ways. It'll miss some accounts that are younger than 16.

22:12It will block some accounts from people who are older than 16. Users will be able to re-access their deactivated accounts when they turn 16. So if you have an account now and it gets blocked, you don't lose all your data. It'll all just sit there until you turn 16. And you can also download your data before the deactivation happens, which I mean, that would be, even if I, I mean, I'm not 15 years old, but if I were, you know, it would be like, let me just, you know, maybe there's a bunch of photos and videos and stuff that's really important to you. Yeah, right. I want to look at in the next three years.

22:45Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And deactivation, you know, sure. They say, well, we'll turn it back on when you are of age. Who knows? It's always good to have a backup. Yeah. So that's kind of where I'm going with this. And I think that the whole margin of error thing is going to be a factor. It just is because people get around age verification systems all the time. And get ready for the stories, both directions. Indeed, indeed. Yeah, you're going to have adults saying, well, you know, they thought I was 14 and now I don't have any of my data anymore. All that stuff. I'm a 27-year-old person. You can actually get – by the way, if you're – not only can you download, you can delete it as well.

23:30That's another thing you can do if you're just like, you can just say, I'm done with this. You can download it, then delete it. Finally, some quick headlines that are just good to know if you want to understand the news in the future. Keep these in mind. Epic says it will work with competitor Unity to allow games made with the Unity engine to be offered inside Epic's Fortnite. That's metaverse behavior. A spat that could have reduced auto making worldwide is de-escalating. The Netherlands has suspended the governmental powers it had imposed on Nexperia. Nexperia makes automotive chips in China and then sends them to their factories in the Netherlands.

24:05So that's good news for the automotive sector. And big thanks to RW Nash for noting this on our subreddit. Thunderbird 145 has added full native support for Microsoft Exchange without needing add-ons. Oh, finally. Uh, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has resigned from OpenAI's board amidst revelations related to email conversations he had with Jeffrey Epstein. This will reduce OpenAI's government lobbying experience. I doubt it will reduce their government lobbying, but he was fairly experienced and a good advisor on that for them. The unidentified developer of indie game Megabonk withdrew its nomination for debut indie game at the Game Awards, saying it was an honor, but, quote, I've made games in the past under different studio names.

24:56So Megabonk is not my debut game. Incredible honesty for someone who doesn't want to admit who they are. Yeah, just like, I can't get the debut indie game. Okay, guys, I've been here for a while. The president of the United States has asked Congress to pass a federal standard for oversight of AI in the U.S., possibly suggesting it could be added to the Must Pass Defense Authorization Act. That's something you do if you're like, I just want to make sure this gets through. That indicates that this issue has now reached priority level for the White House. Adobe reached a deal to acquire search engine optimization company SEMrush, which recently debuted a tool for optimizing results in chatbots.

25:41CounterPoint Research estimates that if NVIDIA does switch to using smartphone-style memory chips in its data center server products, which it has talked about doing, the price of smartphone memory could double by late 2026. A federal U.S. judge in the U.S. denied Disney's request for a preliminary injunction against Sling TV offering day passes for accessing its streaming TV services, indicating the judge doesn't think Disney will prevail in its suit. Sling dropped the price of the pass from$5 to one. Kind of a, I don't know, a victory lap, I guess. This goes on until November 30th. A little bit of a celebration.

26:22uh people who are worried about automate automation uh not automotive people worried about automation uh will like this story kroger is going to close three automated fulfillment plants in the u.s that were using robots to pick and pack grocery delivery orders as part of an effort to make delivery faster and more profitable the robots were not faster and more profitable than the humans at least not yet oh robots i'm sorry you're gonna get there you're gonna get there hang in there w a beta info notes that the latest build of whatsapp on test flight includes options to add and switch between multiple accounts and finally if you're looking for the perfect gift for the dtns fan in your life look no further than dailytechnewsshow.com slash store rw nash has reported back on his dtns pint glass uh he notes that it is thicker and sturdier than the pint glasses in the pub, like at Spoons.

27:15You know what you want? You want a thick pint glass. You don't want that thing to break in your hands. So thank you for the report back. I can't wait to hear how the beverages taste in them as well. You can find that pint glass, as well as my e-book, Synced, Know a Little More About Tech, and holiday cards and postcards and things with Len Peralta's new art on them. They're all available at dailytechnewsshow.com slash store. Go there now.

27:43We like to end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. And today we've got George. And you know what, Tom? George is just happy. Yeah. So yesterday I made the remark to Jason. If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own. And George was very happy. George wrote, greetings from Sweden again. You quoted Scoop Nisker. How cool is that? I loved K-SAN in the 70s before I moved here. Thanks and take care, George W. Aw. And so one of those things that I threw out and I'm like, if you know, you know. And it was nice to hear that George was like, oh, I know that reference. I learned that reference when I was living in San Francisco.

28:23So you can't really live in San Francisco. Certainly couldn't. I don't know. Maybe people have forgotten all about Skooknisker and KSAN. But back when I was there, it was still fairly legendary kicking around. Yeah. Thanks, George. and it's always good when we make a little, you know, a little quip here and there. Sometimes we're like, if you know, you know. And then there's always that one person who emails and it's like, I know. Yeah, and it's fun. I get it. Like, oh, I'm glad you're excited. I'm excited too. Indeed. You might be thinking about something that we talked about on this show. You might have some insight into a story we might talk about on a future show.

28:59Either way, share it with us. Feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Big thanks to George for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You keep us in business if you haven't already done it. And big thanks to everyone who has. Go become a patron. Do it right now. Patreon.com slash DTNS.

29:23The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.