Help Galaxy J5 security

[detsi]

Hi , my wife's new J5 comes with a scanner in the form of a blue shield. Does this provide real time protection or is it only a scanner? She would prefer to use Avast. Is there a way to disable the blue shield or, if not, is it ok to use it alongside Avast?

 

[Hadron]

Are you talking about this thing? If so I'm sorry you have that installed: that's the Cheetah Mobile bloatware that Samsung first included with the S6 (a move that has baffled more than a few people here).

I don't know whether there is a way to disable this stuff (you won't be able to remove it without root). The S6 is the device that's had it longest, so it might be worth looking at our S6 forum to see what people's experience of this is.

 

[detsi]

Thanks for your reply, Hadron. Yeah, it is that blue shield within the Smart Manager app. I'll check out the S6 forum as you suggest. Thanks.

 

[El Presidente]

As far as I'm aware, if you're using anything other than the AT&T & Verizon models in the States, bloatware can be disabled, but not uninstalled.

Settings -> Apps -> Smart Clean -> Disable

 

[detsi]

Thanks for that but I'm in the UK. That facility doesn't seem to be available

 

[Hadron]

Samsung do not always allow bloat to be disabled. I have a Samsung tablet (UK, offline stock) and there are some perfectly ordinary apps (Evernote and Flipboard for example) that have nevertheless not only been pre-installed but cannot be disabled without root. I can only assume that the developers paid them to do this, but that is speculation on my part.

So if they are prepared to do that with apps that have no system function at all, I'm not surprised that their version of the Cheetah Mobile apps, which do claim to be doing system management cannot, be disabled. The question is, what functions can you turn off via their settings? Leaving aside wariness about the people who developed this stuff, a lot of what it can do is quite counter-productive (the task killer for example).

 

[mikedt]

Note to self: Don't buy a Samsung.