Samsung has revealed its TVs might be remotely disabled if the corporate finds out the items have been stolen. The characteristic known as the “Tv Block Perform” and Samsung says it was just lately activated in South Africa after numerous Samsung TVs had been taken from an organization warehouse throughout a wave of protests and unrest final month.
Samsung says the know-how is “already pre-loaded on all Samsung TV merchandise” and “ensures that the tv units can solely be utilized by the rightful homeowners with a sound proof of buy.” It’s not clear, although, from Samsung’s description whether or not the characteristic is barely supposed to fight large-scale theft, or if it should ever be used to assist particular person customers.
For the TV Block Perform to work, Samsung must know serial code of the stolen unit. When the set connects to the web, it checks its serial code in opposition to an inventory on Samsung’s servers, and disables all TV performance if it finds a match.
Blocking the TVs stolen in South Africa was presumably comparatively straightforward. They’d been taken from Samsung’s personal warehouse, the place the corporate could be monitoring its stock. It’s potential that a median buyer whose TV is stolen would be capable of report its serial code to the corporate to have it remotely disabled, but it surely’s not clear if Samsung provides or plans to supply such a service. (We’ve reached out to the corporate to ask and can replace this story if we hear again.)
The corporate does say, although, that within the occasion that clients in South Africa have one in every of their TVs blocked accidentally, they will have the block lifted by sending a proof of buy to zaservicemanager@samsung.com.
