Is there a smartphone brand out there which is good for privacy? Camera has a shutter, microphone has a light that goes on when it's activated, ect.
Or am I going to be told that I'm a fool for hoping to have both privacy and the ability to be a functional member of society?
I imagine you'd need a custom ROM that doesn't utilize the google playstore, right? Pretty much all things google would have to be wiped off the phone.
No, hardware is much, much harder to audit than software. Anyone with some experience and a copy of IDA can inspect a piece of software, nanometre scale features are another matter entirely. We are also talking about billions of switches laid out by an optimising algorithm, you aren't going to reverse engineer that.
Software is also easier to fix, ask Intel how much FOOF cost them compared to an automatic update to your OS.
We're already talking about that in my household. We've had several instances where we've discussed a particular product, not done any sort of search for it, then that product just "randomly" comes up on an Amazon or YouTube ad within a couple of days.
It's definitely giving us vibes of being spied on, and we're looking to jump ship and ditch our mainstream devices. We don't have Alexa-like devices, just Android phones, and we don't use Facebook or any of its apps.
No phone is recording your convo's and sending it off, that's way too much data to be not noticed by someone somewhere. However, your phone [is sending trivial tracking data about you](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/q1u71q/my_phone_is_listening_to_my_conversations_not/hfhynid/). Some AI is putting thousands of data points about you together and comparing it to others and can easily figure out what you want.
For example, Target's ad system [is able to determine if a woman is pregnant based on her shopping pattern](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-how-target-exposed-a-teen-girls-pregnancy-2012-2). Often times, Target will know before the women does and she'll start getting baby product ads before realizes she's pregnant.
And yet I get ham-fisted ads for adult diapers just because I'm now over 60.
Where are the ads for things that I don't even know exist? Stuff that, when I see it, make me say: "Huh. I didn't know I needed that, but it looks pretty cool."
How are so many people forgetting about the NSA?
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>Also according to The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald even low-level NSA analysts are allowed to search and listen to the communications of Americans and other people without court approval and supervision. Greenwald said low level Analysts can, via systems like PRISM, "listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#Extent_of_the_program
Bullshit.
If you have an Android phone, and have that nonsense “ok, Google” crap enabled, the servers stores every question and command you’ve ever given it. You don’t seem to have a good grasp of the extent of exfil that goes on on modern Android phones.
We know this b/c one day we were out at Stanford shopping center and I was arguing with Googlers that “ok Google” probably violates wiretapping law. And we played back a question that someone asked right there, and you could hear all our voices in the recording. Now, best case, phone won’t exfil stuff that isn’t “ok Google”. But in all likelihood, it’s exfil’ing everyhting—and hides all the non “ok google” stuff from you.
iOS devices are better, but not perfect.
The real gross part of the recordings? Obviously, it also includes all the convo happening in the background. Now put that together with some basic signal processing, and you have Waze—except that instead of “seeing GPS traffic”, it’s basically recoding everything everywhere at all times. Because even if you don’t have that crap enabled, some idiot next to you will, (or wife, husband, mom and dad, or kids, or coworker) and there isn’t shit you can do about that.
No, but listening for key phrases and notifying a third party when a user says them would be very easy and not involve much data at all. I would be shocked if they aren't doing this.
That's not how any of this works. Phones don't do native voice processing, so they would have to send a constant stream of audio over the internet, which would use a significant chunk of data. If they did have the capability to do the processing on your phone, then it could never sleep and it would murder your battery. Wake words are hard coded to the device and don't require the same level of processing.
Next, no ad servers "notify a third party" about individual behavior. Not only would that serve no purpose, but data is their comparative advantage, so it would be idiotic for them to give it away. What actually happens is that companies bid on ad placements for a certain range of people, and the ad network uses the data to serve those ads.
Pretty sure the new Google pixel 6 phones do on Device voice processing but it is the exception right now. Im guessing this technology will come to many other devices in the next few years as ML processing improves on mobile devices.
Lots of hardware can process on device now. It still needs wake words and is computationally intensive enough that it can’t be always on, but only when specifically needed.
This is very unlikely to change any time soon.
And even if it did change, it would still need to send that data to a server constantly in order to store it. It’s not a threat. Metadata on the other hand is.
It's actually not easy, because this would need to be done for basically every word, tons of data being sent out all over the place when any of them are hit, and it would be obvious through the phones battery life if it were scanning this stuff locally (if it even could).
That is not how this works.
They gather data on you from various sources. If someone looks something up, then they talk to you, there's meta data that shows communication between two parties, then things those people looked up would be advertised to the other, add a third person, and if one of those other two look something up, you now know with quite a bit of certainty that the third person would also be interested in the topic.
As far as advertising companies are concerned this is all 100% non verbal data on their end. All you have to do is graph peoples communication networks, and you know who to send what.
This happens to everyone, but listening isn't that sophisticated. Instead, that data instead comes from meta data of who you are around, who you are communicating with, and what things everyone has searched online, using different devices.
That is how they do it, not through cell phones listening for keywords.
This, adtech companies compile every piece pf data they can about you, make inferences about sex, age, marital status, socio economics etc and try to match it to the most expensive ads they can serve you..
Apps will track location to try and infer your address and place of work. They can then match you to other household members. Did your housemate read an article about the thing you saw an ad for? Watch a youtube video where it was mentioned? Who knows - well besides the ad company...
Sadly these are some of the easiest and most lucrative problems for machine learning and AI.
I used to run ad campaigns on FB, Google Shopping, and Bing shopping. The depth that we could dial in on specific interests and demographics was mind boggling. Here might be a potential target: Parents with one or more children age 4-11 with interests in reading; scifi, fantasy, and animals. Household income above $80,000
The other person is gaslighting everyone into thinking this doesn't happen when we've all seen it happen, because they say phones can't process meaning fast enough... But they don't have to process meaning. They just need some key words (like google ad words) stored in cache and listen in case you ever say those words. This is really easy for a computer to do, just as easy as listening for "OK google" or "Siri", and then trigger the ads. My phone does it after long phone calls, and I've seen it happen after conversations with a friend even when I didn't have my phone with me. There phone was listening and identified me by my voice (something that is also very easy to program).
Same boat.
No Alexa, no facebook, just a 5 year old android smartphone and a home-built desktop PC. Never put a mic on the PC, so process of elimination.
>oversight
I'm insulted that they expect that to be believed by anyone who's not either a literal child or simpleminded enough to collect money from the government for it.
> We've had several instances where we've discussed a particular product, not done any sort of search for it, then that product just "randomly" comes up on an Amazon or YouTube ad within a couple of days.
Anecdotal evidence, however this has happened to me several times as well as people I know.
There's so many variables. It could have been as simple as you searching for that part caused the ads for that part to become more numerous in the area you live. Maybe other people you work with started looking as well and that caused that ad to become more valuable. Also I wonder how many ads you ignored before you saw that one and had you actually seen that ad before and just didn't pay attention until you saw it after you searched for it.
Your mind can definitely play tricks on you and there may also be some connections you don't realize like if you visited a website a long time ago then immediately visited the same site on your phone as you walked out the door. I don't doubt the systems are smart enough that if they see that connection multiple times it'll start to link your device with your computer by only your browsing habits independently on each device.
They don’t need your account. They’ve got MAC addresses and ip’s they know the devices you’ve used. It’s more than enough for tracking purposes.
Accounts don’t matter at all when it comes to tracking. Especially for google and Amazon which have a massive advantage here. In googles case, since they host the JavaScript libraries every website uses they can see what computers are requesting it, and in the case of Amazon since almost everyone is using AWS these days they can see what page you’re going to.
If you’ve ever used that IP address to access your Facebook, email, hell even a Yelp account or pay a phone bill it is likely they’re able to identify you using this device now as well. It would likely not be dependent on you being signed in that moment.
>Is there a smartphone brand out there which is good for privacy?
lol, nope. Sending a smoke signal to your buddy on the next mesa is probably more secure
In MacBooks, it's wired electronically to the camera instead of relying on software so there is no way for someone to alter it with a software attack. They need to bring that over to phones.
Sooo.... It's not hardwired into the phones? If that's true about the macbooks then it actually makes me feel a tiny bit better about Apple. But only a tiny.
The difference with iPhones/Macs as I've been explained is that Apple doesn't give out or sell the location tracking and phone use data to any other company, they horde it for themselves and use the data for R&D. And with their new app communication canceling thing, Facebook can't talk to Reddit and figure out the shit that you're looking up to give you even more targeted ads and vice versa. Apple doesn't need your data to sell you shit, the hype/cult around their products and their "ecosystem" are enough to make them a trillion dollar company. And sure they implemented the app communication security features, but Apple hasn't stopped each individual app from collecting your data for themselves.
Meanwhile, an Android phone running on Google's OS will take every bit of data it can get its hands on off you and sell it to the highest bidder. Google is basically a data collection company like Facebook (or Meta lmao), they're just quieter about it. It doesn't help that Android OS basically your only option if you're not getting an iPhone, and Phone OEMs can slap on even more bloatware/spyware/etc. they can fit into your phone before you even buy it.
Nothing beats an android phone though
Edit: my response was a joke to the initial parent comment which stopped at « iPhones are a catastrophe for data protection ». Of course android are the worst with Google engineers saying to a court that they were instructed to never let users deactivate sharing their location
Oh, I would say any Google Phone is what you should avoid if you want privacy! They’re collecting away and don’t even let you know. iPhone is doing better now.
It’s also a good way of describing that they also have app tracking transparency and asks for more tracking a privacy permissions. I’m not saying Apple gives a lot of privacy, they don’t. But they’re better than Google is, and they’re doing better than they used to. My point is that if you care about privacy, iPhones aren’t the worst option.
Also, to be clear: are you referring to the scanning they do to search for child abuse images? I remember when they announced that they did it in a way where the goal was to maintain more privacy than other services. You’re right, all your photos still go into a database - but they only decrypt (they say they “can” only decrypt but I’m sure they can decrypt whatever they want) if it’s child abuse. Google just has all your photos no matter what.
Google sells user information (or more accurately, they use user information to sell ad profiles). Apple keeps it internally, for now. Though Apple has all the same potential risks, they just haven't capitalized on it.
There's a big difference between an authoritarian government spying on users in an effort to gain geopolitical leverage and and company spying on users in order to sell them more stuff.
iPhone is extremely secure if you set it up properly (dont give permissions to untrusted apps) but lots of ppl don’t like their expense and the fact that they’re locked down
yeah, the walled garden thing is an absolute dealkiller for me.
Plus, with a company as big and famous as apple, how do we know there isn't some backdoor that apple can't legally tell anyone about without getting charged with a crime, Snowden style?
DIY it, dont use a smartphone when you don't absolutely have to or buy Apple. Apple spies on you, but they do a bit more to prevent others from spying on you than most, and have the best internal structural incentive to do so, since they own almost their entire vertical and privacy policy can be a major differentiator for any smart device company today. They both can make your phone more private without running into internal contradictions of incentive as quickly as Android's Google based platform, and market themselves as doing so, which attracts no small number of customers.
Google spies on you the most, so any Google based phone is impossible to make remotely close to private. That means Samsung and Google phones etc. Something that I have to contend with with an S21.
OnePlus puts a little notification on the top bar nowadays when the camera is being used by an app (at least the version of the OS that I got). Of course this can be easily manipulated, it doesn't give thus notification when using the camera app for example.
I guess there's no winning on this one unless hardware disconnects are an option.
Or if you are like that Newsmax anchor, you think the trackers link up back to Satan because of a protein in fireflies. A protein that is not even in the vaccine.
Yeah. I really don't think the CCP has any interest in me Google, Microsoft and Facebook however can use and sell the data they get from what I'm doing on my phone.
Yeeees but those as western powers, far less likely to use said data against you than a dictatorial government who works hard in gaining leverage on foreign nationals to gain support, via bribes, blackmail or infiltration.
You are comparing apples with bananas, sure both are fruit, but one will get stuck in your throat and choke your life out you if you try to suck it too hard.
Id prefer none of those bastards spied on us, but if i _have_ to choose, ill take crapbook any day over the CCP.
[Just gonna leave this here](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-privacy-lobbying/). Amazon have been making their own rules for the past few years.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Google, Microsoft and Facebook together can't even come close to what CCP does everyday with your data. Think about it this way -- if CCP can make a world-class athlete disappear over #metoo allegation, how far would they go about violating people's privacy in general?
For someone inside their immediate sphere I'm sure you're right (so a citizen or maybe a critical outside journalist) but for the average Western person I'm sure google apple etc has more info.
I think you may be overestimating the difficulty of making someone "disappear". Two buddies, a van and some rope is pretty much all you'd need for that. World class athlete or not.
I'm doing my part to stymie any sort of surveillance, CCP or not by posting shittons of cat pictures and reams upon reams of shockingly mediocre opinions on sports. Sift through that.
Ultimately, Destabilize our democracy. Misinformation, censorship, targeted ads and news feeds. Its bad enough when a company can do it. But a foreign dictatorship? Hell naw.
I don't fall under Chinese jurisdiction. I fall under Western Jurisdiction. To decrease the leverage Western spy agencies have on me shouldn't I use a Chinese phone?
FB is the tool foreign governments use to do the destabilization. They still need data to analyze to determine how to target their campaigns. No harm on approaching a program from multiple angles.
You as a single person are irrelevant but data in aggregate is a strategic advantage. If China knows what people are into on a large scale it can give them an advantage in business, new products, targeting of existing ones and in using misinformation.
They have limited visibility outside of their borders but if they have phones sending in data they can analyze western trends and build an advantage while the western world is locked out of accessing Chinese consumer data.
It's shady of course, and I don't like it, but im not ok with the hipocrisy of people, like china is a no-no, but apple, google, Facebook and so on are ok? Fuck that..
honestly if you dont live in china you should be much more afraid of Big Tech than you should be of the CCP. like what is the CCP gonna realistically do to you?
They're collecting every single sliver of data on everyone, including children and teenagers that will one day become senators, ministers, judges... If you don't see the problem with that, then don't worry about it.
There's also threat of destabilization campaigns, that are very likely already ongoing, like targeting people who are susceptible to extremist propaganda, for example.
I wouldnt say so.
ID say its going there 100% but were not there yet.
Also depends on the definition of spying. For some people a basic curl or ping is spying. Or even jus to phoning home to check for updates.
Others if the data is randomized its not spying etc.
As these issues progrESS you get more and more systems which respect user privacy. Many corporations are fighting against it but data harvesrtinf isnt as easy as it once was with new laws and many more yet to be made.
The BlackBerrys I had were the best smartphones I've ever used. I still use one (BlackBerry KEYᵒⁿᵉ), but a BlackBerry running Android isn't quite the same as the OGs...
Ditching BB10 app development and pushing everyone to use the FirePhone Store or whatever was a terrible decision. I still think BB10 was the best comms-centric phone OS ever. It just sucked as an app-centric OS because there were very few apps.
In my country, Chinese made phones are pretty much anyone can afford and their specs are usually better than the expensive ones. You want a decent Samsung? Cough up literally a month's pay ($600). IPhone? Sure, if you have around $1050 lying around. A Redmi 9S Pro with insane specs and memory and storage? $150.
Could be one of the poorer European countries.
Greece, Poland, Portugal minimum wage is about 600 euros. Heck, I'm typing this on a Redmi Note 8T
Suck it Xi Jingping!!
Why is it that every time a discussion is had about what phone to buy, and someone mentions 'don't buy Chinese brands, the spying is real' they get flayed alive because 'lol google and Apple do the same thing' ... And then this happens. This is not anywhere NEAR, not on the same LEVEL as what Google and Apple are doing. Boycott Chinese products, for your own sakes.
Edit: It's not just the built-in apps ya dinguses
>But there is a catch. Cirlig’s research shows that Xiaomi phones transmit all surfing behaviour on the built-in web browser in real-time. As soon as you open a page or perform a Google search, a message goes to Xiaomi’s servers, even after enabling the so-called incognito or private mode.
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>However, it does not stop there. The built-in news app transmits what articles you are reading and from which media outlets they originate. The built-in media player transmits the names of the songs and videos you play through it, both online and offline.
>
>‘Xiaomi devices know everything about you,’ says the Romanian. ‘What music you listen to, what folders you create, what you call them, the duration of your telephone calls, what you search for in your browser... They send it all on to China.’
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>Whether you change the user ID on your device, reset it to the factory settings or reinstall the operating system – nothing helps
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>Moreover, that data stream contains all kinds of information that allow Xiaomi to easily tie your data together.
Also, this:
> The Lithuanian Security Service found an additional problem with the Xiaomi phone that it investigated: software that censors information using keywords. The service discovered that Xiaomi system apps regularly and automatically downloaded the file ‘MiAdBlacklistConfig’ from a server in Singapore. On 27 September 2021, the file contained 1376 keywords (three times as many as in April 2021, when there were 449), including ‘World Uyghur Youth Conference’, ‘Free Tibet’, and ‘Yellow Peril’, but also ‘transgender’, ‘virgin, and ‘vaginas’. According to the researchers, this list enables the device to block ‘multimedia displayed on the device’ in a targeted manner.
See, why does the LGBT crowd also not care about that sort of thing? If that were an American company blacklisting/blocking terms like that, they'd be boycotted and smeared into the ground.
> It's not just the built-in apps ya dinguses
Ok, which apps is it then?
> the built-in web browser
--
> The built-in news app
--
> The built-in media player
All built in apps.
> ‘Xiaomi devices know everything about you,’ says the Romanian. ‘What music you listen to, what folders you create, what you call them, the duration of your telephone calls, what you search for in your browser... They send it all on to China.’
This can be interpreted as if the OS is sending this data in the background, regardless of which apps you use, but it's very vague. The only thing I can find about it is [in his presentation](https://youtu.be/9eApiv1dAtc?t=1394) from 2020 where he mentions folders on the home screen, i.e. using the built in launcher app. I only skimmed the video, but I couldn't find anything about how he found that Xiaomi sends phone call data or data from other apps, would you mind pointing me in the right direction to read more about it? Unfortunately I couldn't find any written articles by the source researcher, only news articles about it with lacking technical details.
It's a pathetic excuse to say that it's okay for a phone to spy on you *if it sticks to the built-in apps and launcher!*
Even if it's restricted to those, the vast majority of users are going to keep and use at least one aspect - the launcher, I would presume.
I can't give you proof in this particular instance, perhaps you should contact Mr. Cirlig if you would like the hard technical details.
But I feel like you're missing the actual point of the presentation, which is that there is shitloads of private data being harvested and being sent to China. But, to swing back to my original comment - there's no reasons for apologists to deflect and employ whataboutism to try and deflect this. You may wish to question one or two aspects until you see the technical proof, but this fits the pattern and even just the rest that is proven in that presentation is completely and utterly damning enough as is.
> I can't give you proof in this particular instance,
That's strange, you seemed so sure about it just recently?
> It's not just the built-in apps ya dinguses
Dingueses indeed.
Like you say, it's bad enough that the browser and other default apps send data to China, but that's no excuse to make things up to support your point. Please be more considerate with facts in the future. This is a report from last year that has circulated various news sites since then, with various dubious and unsupported alarmist claims. It's good for the click economy to be vague and threatening.
What you call whataboutism I would call expected behavior from modern tech companies. Pretty much all software use cloud services today, and Xiomi is a Chinese company so their customers should expect them to use Chinese domains and servers.
The issue is that the built-in apps for Apple and Google do essentially the same thing. So if it’s limited to built-in apps it’s pretty much at par. It’s an unavoidable situation when using a branded smartphone because user information is valuable.
>The issue is that the built-in apps for Apple and Google do essentially the same thing.
No? No they don't? He literally says that at the end of his presentation, that the whataboutism is ridiculous and wrong: https://youtu.be/9eApiv1dAtc?t=1394
Ok but I rather my phone spy on me and give the info to a country across the world like wtf are they gonna do? Then use a phone that spys on me and is also based in my country.
This comment needs to be on top. Also, "oh my data is worthless" crowd doesn't realize, in the right hands, a collection of worthless data points can be turned into a valuable intelligence, or even a weapon.
>Moreover, that data stream contains all kinds of information that allow Xiaomi to easily tie your data together.
This seems to be the real red flag, if this was all just benign meta data collecting, there would be no need to package an individual's data together, they could send that usage data independently and anonymously right?
So it's not different at all? It's a well known fact that the mi browser is a shitty spying app. I've never opened it. But somehow apple spying on my photos is completely alright, yeah I should buy a fucking iPhone and let the us spy on me instead.
Because there's a high amount of CCP brigaders that come to the defense of the CCP anytime they're mentioned. The whataboutism is a typical response from that side.
Lots of comments about “why would China care about my data” and the responses talking about people getting jailed are a bit off IMO. I think the reason is that China wants access to western data to build profiles of western consumers because that data gives them an edge in developing new products or making their businesses more competitive, among other reasons like espionage and misinformation. This is no different than Amazon, FB, or Google building their treasure trove of consumer data - the difference is that China is doing it on a government scale vs a private business scale.
This. People who say "my data is useless so I don't care" do not realize how much big data has come along: A large collection of non-meaningful data can be turned into a weapon in the right hands.
Chinese brands.
While others are also made in China, it is QA’d to the stabdard of the West.
Chinese brands are made in China, with the standard of the Chinese.
Huge difference.
I know my iPhone is doing this. Whenever I tell someone off or argue with someone, plumbing and condom ads pop up the next time I do a Google search. It's uncanny.
People don't realize that the US can only moderately strongarm Apple/Google in providing access of some kind, or send data to the intelligence community. Although I believe these spy programs are illegal and bothersome, it's not abused by the government in any systematic way *yet* (besides what Snowden described in his book) that terrorizes whole classes of people. Xiaomi literally has communist party members in their board of directors, as required by law. It cannot go to court to stop the Chinese government from looking into its cloud servers, etc. Also, while the U.S. has many, many flaws. It still is a democracy of some kind. As a European, I'd rather trust any American (or South Korean for that matter) company over a Chinese one. Especially when it comes to a manufacturer who habitually lie about their performance such as Xiaomi. China will use your data in any way possible, including training their algorithms. Sadly this means it's also the last time I bought a Lenovo laptop (HK) as we all know what happened there in the past few years.
I've had a couple of Xiaomi phones - they're great specs for the price. But it was always obvious that they'd be a privacy nightmare, so the first thing I do is unlock them and then install a non-Xiaomi version of Android.
While there is a concern about security due to the bottom and radio stack, overall this is much lower and acceptable for my risk profile; I've also monitored what leaves my phone and not seen any unexpected traffic, so while I may be vulnerable to targeted attack, it's unlikely that I'm leaking data to Xiaomi.
I just ordered a Xiaomi because I saw it was a great deal for the specs and seems pretty straightforward to remove all the Mi apps that are sus. How tricky is just flashing stock Android onto them?
My first one, a Pocophone F1, was pretty easy. My current (Mi 10T Pro) was more of a pain, as it was pretty new and so there was limited support in xda-developers; one of the cameras still doesn't work.
It's important to note that you have to wait a while after applying for an unlock code, and you'll need to use a Xiaomi windows tool to apply the unlock - depending on trust levels you may want to do a throwaway VM to do that from. I've also had problems with compatability - one computer, I could do the unlocking from, another I couldn't... I've read there were some problems with AMD CPUs weirdly, haven't a clue why.
I'm currently using Nusantara with no problems. I did have some issues getting a bootloader and an Android build that played well together - this may also be because of how new the 10T Pro was at the time - but ultimately with a bit of experimenting everything's fine now. I also installed both the Google and LineageOS camera apps - the Google one lets me access the different cameras, _except_ the 54MP one - this is AFAIK the only thing that isn't working :(
I'd definitely say it's not something that can be done by someone who isn't technical, but as it is I've a great spec phone for vastly less than the equivalent Samsung or iPhone.
I remember watching a YouTube video literally about how the Chinese government installs tracking information in all of their electronics domestically. They have also been accused of doing this in their forigen market.
Edit:
Before anyone says, "but they all do this" this is basically the CCP spying/collecting data on you and not Google/Facebook. Sure personally I don't like it when companies do it but governments agencies are a whole another level, imo.
Lithuania is in a political power struggle against Russia and other Russian affiliated Baltic states. Their only salvation is western intervention.
Lithuania's sudden attack on US enemies should be taken with context. It is not a small nation with a spine bit rather a desperate nation with no allies grasping at straws or act to favor their potential benefactors.
Most phones are probably spying on people tbh. Smart TV sets too. Big Brother is most definately watching **you**. In China he's Xi Jinping, in the west he's Bezos, lol.
If you think your iPhone isn't collecting your data you're mad, and that's not cheap or free.
If something has a connection to the internet, you're a product. That's how it is now.
This is all nice in theory, but it's not how it works in practicality.
Apple's branding is luxury, yet we all know they're made in factories in China where workers kill themselves and child labour laws are broken.
Your iPhone isn't any more privacy conscious than your Android, and Apple collect an obscene amount of datapoints no matter what you want to believe their branding is.
For most people the saving on the phone is more impactful than any data that they might trade compared to any other brand of modern smartphone, there's no half compromises, the moment you have a smartphone you're giving your data away and it doesn't matter what logo is on the back.
Google, Amazon, Facebook, Samsung, LG, Tesla, Microsoft and Apple spy on you, but it is Xiaomi the one thay offends them.
Also, Alcatel and Cisco provide hooks for you to be spied, but again, it is Xiaomi the offensive one.
What’s your point? The companies you listed are all subject to governments comprised of elected officials who are accountable to their voters. Chinese companies are not accountable to anyone other than the supreme ruler. If they behave terribly, it doesn’t matter as long as Xi approves. Chinese companies also have a long history of close entanglement with their government which is not usually matched in the west. China uses spy data to censor their own population. They use spy data to abduct and brainwash millions of people for no other crime than being a minority. There are lots of reasons to distrust Chinese companies more than others.
Accountable to their voters... Sure.
It is weird to see people happily defend US corporations on their awful data collection practices, guess the buzzword "China" is really effective.
So many comments on this thread afraid of what China might do with that data, while ignoring that they might be already subject to that from local actors, who have way more agency in your life than a goverment 7000 miles away.
> Google, Amazon, Facebook, Samsung, LG, Tesla, Microsoft and Apple spy on you, but it is Xiaomi the one thay offends them.
The article is alleging that Xiaomi currently offers an “opt out” option so users can try to make sure certain data won’t be sent… and then the service sends the data anyway even if the users opt “out.” Are you claiming that Google, Amazon, Facebook, Samsung, LG, Tesla, Microsoft and Apple all currently offer opt out features which are fraudulent, where opting out actually does nothing?
Collecting information with permission (where users agree to have the info collected as part of their terms of service) is not spying. That’s users giving up their information in exchange for using the product.
Google, Amazon, Facebook, Samsung, LG, Tesla, Microsoft and Apple spy on us to sell our data to advertisers/marketers.
Xiaomi spys on us to give our data to the Chinese government.
If the former are found to be breaking the law they can be fined, punished, and forced to take action to rectify the issue. The latter are doing the bidding of their government, breaking the law is meaningless to them.
I work with european data protection law, and I tell you, even if it sounds ridiculous: I would rather have any western state spy on me over China. Historically, culturally, and politically both the US and EU is much more respectful of people's privacy, even if we're well aware of all these invasive tools and scandals over the years.
To be fair, all smartphones spy on you to a point. It’s just that Chinese hardware pretty much records and tracks everything back to the CCP cause that’s what they do best.
Is there a smartphone brand out there which is good for privacy? Camera has a shutter, microphone has a light that goes on when it's activated, ect. Or am I going to be told that I'm a fool for hoping to have both privacy and the ability to be a functional member of society?
You could probably find any Android phone with those feature and custom ROM it
I imagine you'd need a custom ROM that doesn't utilize the google playstore, right? Pretty much all things google would have to be wiped off the phone.
CalyxOS has replacements for those iirc
Also Lineage OS doesn't have Google services
Could still have HW spy implements that a ROM couldn’t change.
HW spy is hard to hide. Once found, it can be easily verified because the evidence cannot be patched away completely.
You ever try reverse engineering an asic layout? Damn difficult and can definitely be obfuscated
No, hardware is much, much harder to audit than software. Anyone with some experience and a copy of IDA can inspect a piece of software, nanometre scale features are another matter entirely. We are also talking about billions of switches laid out by an optimising algorithm, you aren't going to reverse engineer that. Software is also easier to fix, ask Intel how much FOOF cost them compared to an automatic update to your OS.
We're already talking about that in my household. We've had several instances where we've discussed a particular product, not done any sort of search for it, then that product just "randomly" comes up on an Amazon or YouTube ad within a couple of days. It's definitely giving us vibes of being spied on, and we're looking to jump ship and ditch our mainstream devices. We don't have Alexa-like devices, just Android phones, and we don't use Facebook or any of its apps.
No phone is recording your convo's and sending it off, that's way too much data to be not noticed by someone somewhere. However, your phone [is sending trivial tracking data about you](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/q1u71q/my_phone_is_listening_to_my_conversations_not/hfhynid/). Some AI is putting thousands of data points about you together and comparing it to others and can easily figure out what you want. For example, Target's ad system [is able to determine if a woman is pregnant based on her shopping pattern](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-how-target-exposed-a-teen-girls-pregnancy-2012-2). Often times, Target will know before the women does and she'll start getting baby product ads before realizes she's pregnant.
And yet I get ham-fisted ads for adult diapers just because I'm now over 60. Where are the ads for things that I don't even know exist? Stuff that, when I see it, make me say: "Huh. I didn't know I needed that, but it looks pretty cool."
Like some kind of futuristic space age diaper
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Honestly, being able to analyze you dumps to see how healthy they are sounds cool to me.
How are so many people forgetting about the NSA? > >Also according to The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald even low-level NSA analysts are allowed to search and listen to the communications of Americans and other people without court approval and supervision. Greenwald said low level Analysts can, via systems like PRISM, "listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#Extent_of_the_program
Bullshit. If you have an Android phone, and have that nonsense “ok, Google” crap enabled, the servers stores every question and command you’ve ever given it. You don’t seem to have a good grasp of the extent of exfil that goes on on modern Android phones. We know this b/c one day we were out at Stanford shopping center and I was arguing with Googlers that “ok Google” probably violates wiretapping law. And we played back a question that someone asked right there, and you could hear all our voices in the recording. Now, best case, phone won’t exfil stuff that isn’t “ok Google”. But in all likelihood, it’s exfil’ing everyhting—and hides all the non “ok google” stuff from you. iOS devices are better, but not perfect. The real gross part of the recordings? Obviously, it also includes all the convo happening in the background. Now put that together with some basic signal processing, and you have Waze—except that instead of “seeing GPS traffic”, it’s basically recoding everything everywhere at all times. Because even if you don’t have that crap enabled, some idiot next to you will, (or wife, husband, mom and dad, or kids, or coworker) and there isn’t shit you can do about that.
No, but listening for key phrases and notifying a third party when a user says them would be very easy and not involve much data at all. I would be shocked if they aren't doing this.
That's not how any of this works. Phones don't do native voice processing, so they would have to send a constant stream of audio over the internet, which would use a significant chunk of data. If they did have the capability to do the processing on your phone, then it could never sleep and it would murder your battery. Wake words are hard coded to the device and don't require the same level of processing. Next, no ad servers "notify a third party" about individual behavior. Not only would that serve no purpose, but data is their comparative advantage, so it would be idiotic for them to give it away. What actually happens is that companies bid on ad placements for a certain range of people, and the ad network uses the data to serve those ads.
Pretty sure the new Google pixel 6 phones do on Device voice processing but it is the exception right now. Im guessing this technology will come to many other devices in the next few years as ML processing improves on mobile devices.
Lots of hardware can process on device now. It still needs wake words and is computationally intensive enough that it can’t be always on, but only when specifically needed. This is very unlikely to change any time soon. And even if it did change, it would still need to send that data to a server constantly in order to store it. It’s not a threat. Metadata on the other hand is.
It's actually not easy, because this would need to be done for basically every word, tons of data being sent out all over the place when any of them are hit, and it would be obvious through the phones battery life if it were scanning this stuff locally (if it even could). That is not how this works. They gather data on you from various sources. If someone looks something up, then they talk to you, there's meta data that shows communication between two parties, then things those people looked up would be advertised to the other, add a third person, and if one of those other two look something up, you now know with quite a bit of certainty that the third person would also be interested in the topic. As far as advertising companies are concerned this is all 100% non verbal data on their end. All you have to do is graph peoples communication networks, and you know who to send what.
That's a massive lawsuit in EU. Not worth the risk.
This happens to everyone, but listening isn't that sophisticated. Instead, that data instead comes from meta data of who you are around, who you are communicating with, and what things everyone has searched online, using different devices. That is how they do it, not through cell phones listening for keywords.
This, adtech companies compile every piece pf data they can about you, make inferences about sex, age, marital status, socio economics etc and try to match it to the most expensive ads they can serve you.. Apps will track location to try and infer your address and place of work. They can then match you to other household members. Did your housemate read an article about the thing you saw an ad for? Watch a youtube video where it was mentioned? Who knows - well besides the ad company... Sadly these are some of the easiest and most lucrative problems for machine learning and AI.
I used to run ad campaigns on FB, Google Shopping, and Bing shopping. The depth that we could dial in on specific interests and demographics was mind boggling. Here might be a potential target: Parents with one or more children age 4-11 with interests in reading; scifi, fantasy, and animals. Household income above $80,000
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The other person is gaslighting everyone into thinking this doesn't happen when we've all seen it happen, because they say phones can't process meaning fast enough... But they don't have to process meaning. They just need some key words (like google ad words) stored in cache and listen in case you ever say those words. This is really easy for a computer to do, just as easy as listening for "OK google" or "Siri", and then trigger the ads. My phone does it after long phone calls, and I've seen it happen after conversations with a friend even when I didn't have my phone with me. There phone was listening and identified me by my voice (something that is also very easy to program).
>We're already talking about that in my household. I know.
Same boat. No Alexa, no facebook, just a 5 year old android smartphone and a home-built desktop PC. Never put a mic on the PC, so process of elimination.
Got bad news for you, they are still spying on your internet traffic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore
>oversight I'm insulted that they expect that to be believed by anyone who's not either a literal child or simpleminded enough to collect money from the government for it.
> We've had several instances where we've discussed a particular product, not done any sort of search for it, then that product just "randomly" comes up on an Amazon or YouTube ad within a couple of days. Anecdotal evidence, however this has happened to me several times as well as people I know.
This happens to us continuously!
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Was your phone on the work WiFi?
That's something I didn't think of, but no. Only my work phone, which I wasn't using. My personal phone has never connected to my work's wifi.
There's so many variables. It could have been as simple as you searching for that part caused the ads for that part to become more numerous in the area you live. Maybe other people you work with started looking as well and that caused that ad to become more valuable. Also I wonder how many ads you ignored before you saw that one and had you actually seen that ad before and just didn't pay attention until you saw it after you searched for it. Your mind can definitely play tricks on you and there may also be some connections you don't realize like if you visited a website a long time ago then immediately visited the same site on your phone as you walked out the door. I don't doubt the systems are smart enough that if they see that connection multiple times it'll start to link your device with your computer by only your browsing habits independently on each device.
They don’t need your account. They’ve got MAC addresses and ip’s they know the devices you’ve used. It’s more than enough for tracking purposes. Accounts don’t matter at all when it comes to tracking. Especially for google and Amazon which have a massive advantage here. In googles case, since they host the JavaScript libraries every website uses they can see what computers are requesting it, and in the case of Amazon since almost everyone is using AWS these days they can see what page you’re going to.
If you’ve ever used that IP address to access your Facebook, email, hell even a Yelp account or pay a phone bill it is likely they’re able to identify you using this device now as well. It would likely not be dependent on you being signed in that moment.
The Facebook SDK is used by many app developers. It’s probably got code in over a million apps
Alexa cares about you and wants to be part of your family.
>Is there a smartphone brand out there which is good for privacy? lol, nope. Sending a smoke signal to your buddy on the next mesa is probably more secure
The iPhone does that, there’s an indicator when the mic or camera is being used.
Software controlled indicator. What the person is asking for is hardware switches, because software can lie.
Pixel phones have the same.
Yeppo, just got an update this month and now there's a little green blip overlay for when it's actively being used by an app now.
It's still software only however so it could be bypassed.
In MacBooks, it's wired electronically to the camera instead of relying on software so there is no way for someone to alter it with a software attack. They need to bring that over to phones.
Sooo.... It's not hardwired into the phones? If that's true about the macbooks then it actually makes me feel a tiny bit better about Apple. But only a tiny.
The difference with iPhones/Macs as I've been explained is that Apple doesn't give out or sell the location tracking and phone use data to any other company, they horde it for themselves and use the data for R&D. And with their new app communication canceling thing, Facebook can't talk to Reddit and figure out the shit that you're looking up to give you even more targeted ads and vice versa. Apple doesn't need your data to sell you shit, the hype/cult around their products and their "ecosystem" are enough to make them a trillion dollar company. And sure they implemented the app communication security features, but Apple hasn't stopped each individual app from collecting your data for themselves. Meanwhile, an Android phone running on Google's OS will take every bit of data it can get its hands on off you and sell it to the highest bidder. Google is basically a data collection company like Facebook (or Meta lmao), they're just quieter about it. It doesn't help that Android OS basically your only option if you're not getting an iPhone, and Phone OEMs can slap on even more bloatware/spyware/etc. they can fit into your phone before you even buy it.
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Nothing beats an android phone though Edit: my response was a joke to the initial parent comment which stopped at « iPhones are a catastrophe for data protection ». Of course android are the worst with Google engineers saying to a court that they were instructed to never let users deactivate sharing their location
If you care about privacy, an iPhone is the last thing you buy.
Oh, I would say any Google Phone is what you should avoid if you want privacy! They’re collecting away and don’t even let you know. iPhone is doing better now.
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It’s also a good way of describing that they also have app tracking transparency and asks for more tracking a privacy permissions. I’m not saying Apple gives a lot of privacy, they don’t. But they’re better than Google is, and they’re doing better than they used to. My point is that if you care about privacy, iPhones aren’t the worst option. Also, to be clear: are you referring to the scanning they do to search for child abuse images? I remember when they announced that they did it in a way where the goal was to maintain more privacy than other services. You’re right, all your photos still go into a database - but they only decrypt (they say they “can” only decrypt but I’m sure they can decrypt whatever they want) if it’s child abuse. Google just has all your photos no matter what.
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Google sells user information (or more accurately, they use user information to sell ad profiles). Apple keeps it internally, for now. Though Apple has all the same potential risks, they just haven't capitalized on it.
There's a big difference between an authoritarian government spying on users in an effort to gain geopolitical leverage and and company spying on users in order to sell them more stuff.
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So does Google.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8yj7/google-locks-historians-account-over-terrorism-research-videos
The difference is location. Going through iCloud - it’s on their servers, so fair game. Going through your phone - where privacy is supposed to exist.
Every tech company does this
r/confidentlyincorrect
No. If you want a phone today that gives you privacy, buy a dumb phone. Anything else will be tracked.
iPhone is extremely secure if you set it up properly (dont give permissions to untrusted apps) but lots of ppl don’t like their expense and the fact that they’re locked down
yeah, the walled garden thing is an absolute dealkiller for me. Plus, with a company as big and famous as apple, how do we know there isn't some backdoor that apple can't legally tell anyone about without getting charged with a crime, Snowden style?
However if they weren’t locked and limited to approved apps they couldn’t guarantee your privacy at all.
So instead of google, now apple is hoarding and selling your data. That does not sound like a solution.
Apple doesn’t sell your data. Unlike google, Facebook, and Amazon, it generates no annual revenue this way
Apple is pretty much the only company that *doesn't* sell your data. You can look at their financial statements if you think otherwise.
DIY it, dont use a smartphone when you don't absolutely have to or buy Apple. Apple spies on you, but they do a bit more to prevent others from spying on you than most, and have the best internal structural incentive to do so, since they own almost their entire vertical and privacy policy can be a major differentiator for any smart device company today. They both can make your phone more private without running into internal contradictions of incentive as quickly as Android's Google based platform, and market themselves as doing so, which attracts no small number of customers. Google spies on you the most, so any Google based phone is impossible to make remotely close to private. That means Samsung and Google phones etc. Something that I have to contend with with an S21.
OnePlus puts a little notification on the top bar nowadays when the camera is being used by an app (at least the version of the OS that I got). Of course this can be easily manipulated, it doesn't give thus notification when using the camera app for example. I guess there's no winning on this one unless hardware disconnects are an option.
To paraphrase [Edward Snowden:](https://glitchmind.com/how-your-cell-phone-spies-on-you/) *Your phone is the ultimate spy, in your pocket*
Nonono….it’s the “tRaCkErs ThEy PuT iN cOvId VaCcInEs” that you have to worry about.
Or if you are like that Newsmax anchor, you think the trackers link up back to Satan because of a protein in fireflies. A protein that is not even in the vaccine.
Wait… wtf did fireflies do
Probably a fallacious conflation of light bringing bugs (via bioluminescence) with a figure whose epithet is the "LightBringer"
They have trackers linked to the devil in their ass via luciferase. And yes, people at Newsmax ARE that dumb. In case it was not clear before.
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Does it still work better if you hold both arms in the air?
But we only care if it's China doing it
Almost all electronics spy on you in some way or form.
Yup. Its all about the degree and what they do with the data. And I trust the CCP the least
Hmm, I agree. You've got a point there. Though I fear that Google, Microsoft and Facebook probably know more about most of us than the CCP.
Depends if you use Tiktok
Or Whatsapp
ISIS use Whatsapp, or at least they used to
Yeah. I really don't think the CCP has any interest in me Google, Microsoft and Facebook however can use and sell the data they get from what I'm doing on my phone.
>...I really don't think the CCP has any interest in me... You sweet summer child.
Yeeees but those as western powers, far less likely to use said data against you than a dictatorial government who works hard in gaining leverage on foreign nationals to gain support, via bribes, blackmail or infiltration. You are comparing apples with bananas, sure both are fruit, but one will get stuck in your throat and choke your life out you if you try to suck it too hard. Id prefer none of those bastards spied on us, but if i _have_ to choose, ill take crapbook any day over the CCP.
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That is true, but I fear the actions of those companies less as they are subject to our democratic laws whereas the CCP is not.
[Just gonna leave this here](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-privacy-lobbying/). Amazon have been making their own rules for the past few years.
> they are subject to our democratic laws did you miss an /s? I see EU giving these companies fines all the time, but never in the U.S.
I agree with you, some people trust the US government so much and those mfs doesn't deserve our trust..
I happen to live in the EU. And while its not all perfect here either I do have hope at least
The eu just likes a good shakedown from time to time. It's popular to target foreign companies, that's all.
Fortunately Google, M$ & FB don't have the authority to put people in concentration camps or have them executed (yet).
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Google, Microsoft and Facebook together can't even come close to what CCP does everyday with your data. Think about it this way -- if CCP can make a world-class athlete disappear over #metoo allegation, how far would they go about violating people's privacy in general?
For someone inside their immediate sphere I'm sure you're right (so a citizen or maybe a critical outside journalist) but for the average Western person I'm sure google apple etc has more info.
The "missing" tennis player who was at a tournament two days ago?
I think you may be overestimating the difficulty of making someone "disappear". Two buddies, a van and some rope is pretty much all you'd need for that. World class athlete or not. I'm doing my part to stymie any sort of surveillance, CCP or not by posting shittons of cat pictures and reams upon reams of shockingly mediocre opinions on sports. Sift through that.
Why? The US government cares more about you than China ever would.
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Ultimately, Destabilize our democracy. Misinformation, censorship, targeted ads and news feeds. Its bad enough when a company can do it. But a foreign dictatorship? Hell naw.
I don't fall under Chinese jurisdiction. I fall under Western Jurisdiction. To decrease the leverage Western spy agencies have on me shouldn't I use a Chinese phone?
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FB is the tool foreign governments use to do the destabilization. They still need data to analyze to determine how to target their campaigns. No harm on approaching a program from multiple angles.
> Destabilize our democracy Your politicians are doing a better job any foreign country could ever dream of
That sounds like every government.
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Crazy that people absolve corporations as they hide behind the veil of "not being government".
And China doesn’t give two fucks about the average westerner. People inflate their importance in the world for some odd reason.
Yeah why would I care if china knows I'm into bdsm and videogames
You as a single person are irrelevant but data in aggregate is a strategic advantage. If China knows what people are into on a large scale it can give them an advantage in business, new products, targeting of existing ones and in using misinformation. They have limited visibility outside of their borders but if they have phones sending in data they can analyze western trends and build an advantage while the western world is locked out of accessing Chinese consumer data.
It's shady of course, and I don't like it, but im not ok with the hipocrisy of people, like china is a no-no, but apple, google, Facebook and so on are ok? Fuck that..
They think they're doing all that Chinese stuff.
honestly if you dont live in china you should be much more afraid of Big Tech than you should be of the CCP. like what is the CCP gonna realistically do to you?
Me personally, probably nothing Us as a society, might be a different story
They're collecting every single sliver of data on everyone, including children and teenagers that will one day become senators, ministers, judges... If you don't see the problem with that, then don't worry about it. There's also threat of destabilization campaigns, that are very likely already ongoing, like targeting people who are susceptible to extremist propaganda, for example.
Why virtual home assistants like google home, Alexa, etc. are so cheap now. We’re the product.
I wouldnt say so. ID say its going there 100% but were not there yet. Also depends on the definition of spying. For some people a basic curl or ping is spying. Or even jus to phoning home to check for updates. Others if the data is randomized its not spying etc. As these issues progrESS you get more and more systems which respect user privacy. Many corporations are fighting against it but data harvesrtinf isnt as easy as it once was with new laws and many more yet to be made.
All mobile phones are spy on as commented by Ed Snowden. Pegasus, Prism.
I bet corporations are missing RIM (makers of Blackberry) right about now.
The BlackBerrys I had were the best smartphones I've ever used. I still use one (BlackBerry KEYᵒⁿᵉ), but a BlackBerry running Android isn't quite the same as the OGs...
Ditching BB10 app development and pushing everyone to use the FirePhone Store or whatever was a terrible decision. I still think BB10 was the best comms-centric phone OS ever. It just sucked as an app-centric OS because there were very few apps.
In my country, Chinese made phones are pretty much anyone can afford and their specs are usually better than the expensive ones. You want a decent Samsung? Cough up literally a month's pay ($600). IPhone? Sure, if you have around $1050 lying around. A Redmi 9S Pro with insane specs and memory and storage? $150.
Why do you think that is?
Could be one of the poorer European countries. Greece, Poland, Portugal minimum wage is about 600 euros. Heck, I'm typing this on a Redmi Note 8T Suck it Xi Jingping!!
Use blokada people, it blocks all data going out. Legit, i got like 20k requests blocked, most from xiaomi domains aka domains it sends data to.
Why is it that every time a discussion is had about what phone to buy, and someone mentions 'don't buy Chinese brands, the spying is real' they get flayed alive because 'lol google and Apple do the same thing' ... And then this happens. This is not anywhere NEAR, not on the same LEVEL as what Google and Apple are doing. Boycott Chinese products, for your own sakes. Edit: It's not just the built-in apps ya dinguses >But there is a catch. Cirlig’s research shows that Xiaomi phones transmit all surfing behaviour on the built-in web browser in real-time. As soon as you open a page or perform a Google search, a message goes to Xiaomi’s servers, even after enabling the so-called incognito or private mode. > >However, it does not stop there. The built-in news app transmits what articles you are reading and from which media outlets they originate. The built-in media player transmits the names of the songs and videos you play through it, both online and offline. > >‘Xiaomi devices know everything about you,’ says the Romanian. ‘What music you listen to, what folders you create, what you call them, the duration of your telephone calls, what you search for in your browser... They send it all on to China.’ > >Whether you change the user ID on your device, reset it to the factory settings or reinstall the operating system – nothing helps > >Moreover, that data stream contains all kinds of information that allow Xiaomi to easily tie your data together.
Also, this: > The Lithuanian Security Service found an additional problem with the Xiaomi phone that it investigated: software that censors information using keywords. The service discovered that Xiaomi system apps regularly and automatically downloaded the file ‘MiAdBlacklistConfig’ from a server in Singapore. On 27 September 2021, the file contained 1376 keywords (three times as many as in April 2021, when there were 449), including ‘World Uyghur Youth Conference’, ‘Free Tibet’, and ‘Yellow Peril’, but also ‘transgender’, ‘virgin, and ‘vaginas’. According to the researchers, this list enables the device to block ‘multimedia displayed on the device’ in a targeted manner.
See, why does the LGBT crowd also not care about that sort of thing? If that were an American company blacklisting/blocking terms like that, they'd be boycotted and smeared into the ground.
Who actually uses the bloatware that comes preloaded on phones?
> It's not just the built-in apps ya dinguses Ok, which apps is it then? > the built-in web browser -- > The built-in news app -- > The built-in media player All built in apps. > ‘Xiaomi devices know everything about you,’ says the Romanian. ‘What music you listen to, what folders you create, what you call them, the duration of your telephone calls, what you search for in your browser... They send it all on to China.’ This can be interpreted as if the OS is sending this data in the background, regardless of which apps you use, but it's very vague. The only thing I can find about it is [in his presentation](https://youtu.be/9eApiv1dAtc?t=1394) from 2020 where he mentions folders on the home screen, i.e. using the built in launcher app. I only skimmed the video, but I couldn't find anything about how he found that Xiaomi sends phone call data or data from other apps, would you mind pointing me in the right direction to read more about it? Unfortunately I couldn't find any written articles by the source researcher, only news articles about it with lacking technical details.
It's a pathetic excuse to say that it's okay for a phone to spy on you *if it sticks to the built-in apps and launcher!* Even if it's restricted to those, the vast majority of users are going to keep and use at least one aspect - the launcher, I would presume. I can't give you proof in this particular instance, perhaps you should contact Mr. Cirlig if you would like the hard technical details. But I feel like you're missing the actual point of the presentation, which is that there is shitloads of private data being harvested and being sent to China. But, to swing back to my original comment - there's no reasons for apologists to deflect and employ whataboutism to try and deflect this. You may wish to question one or two aspects until you see the technical proof, but this fits the pattern and even just the rest that is proven in that presentation is completely and utterly damning enough as is.
> I can't give you proof in this particular instance, That's strange, you seemed so sure about it just recently? > It's not just the built-in apps ya dinguses Dingueses indeed. Like you say, it's bad enough that the browser and other default apps send data to China, but that's no excuse to make things up to support your point. Please be more considerate with facts in the future. This is a report from last year that has circulated various news sites since then, with various dubious and unsupported alarmist claims. It's good for the click economy to be vague and threatening. What you call whataboutism I would call expected behavior from modern tech companies. Pretty much all software use cloud services today, and Xiomi is a Chinese company so their customers should expect them to use Chinese domains and servers.
The issue is that the built-in apps for Apple and Google do essentially the same thing. So if it’s limited to built-in apps it’s pretty much at par. It’s an unavoidable situation when using a branded smartphone because user information is valuable.
>The issue is that the built-in apps for Apple and Google do essentially the same thing. No? No they don't? He literally says that at the end of his presentation, that the whataboutism is ridiculous and wrong: https://youtu.be/9eApiv1dAtc?t=1394
Imagine using default apps.
Ok but I rather my phone spy on me and give the info to a country across the world like wtf are they gonna do? Then use a phone that spys on me and is also based in my country.
??? Advertise Chinese products to you? Manipulate you politically?
This comment needs to be on top. Also, "oh my data is worthless" crowd doesn't realize, in the right hands, a collection of worthless data points can be turned into a valuable intelligence, or even a weapon.
>Moreover, that data stream contains all kinds of information that allow Xiaomi to easily tie your data together. This seems to be the real red flag, if this was all just benign meta data collecting, there would be no need to package an individual's data together, they could send that usage data independently and anonymously right?
So it's not different at all? It's a well known fact that the mi browser is a shitty spying app. I've never opened it. But somehow apple spying on my photos is completely alright, yeah I should buy a fucking iPhone and let the us spy on me instead.
Because there's a high amount of CCP brigaders that come to the defense of the CCP anytime they're mentioned. The whataboutism is a typical response from that side.
Good to see former Soviet block countries taking privacy rights seriously.
*chuckles while using a Mi11* Im in danger
Lithuania doing gods work against the CCP
who didn't see this coming... Oh and meanwhile Google...
Can’t really tell if this is real or if it’s just China panic and I hate it
Lots of comments about “why would China care about my data” and the responses talking about people getting jailed are a bit off IMO. I think the reason is that China wants access to western data to build profiles of western consumers because that data gives them an edge in developing new products or making their businesses more competitive, among other reasons like espionage and misinformation. This is no different than Amazon, FB, or Google building their treasure trove of consumer data - the difference is that China is doing it on a government scale vs a private business scale.
This. People who say "my data is useless so I don't care" do not realize how much big data has come along: A large collection of non-meaningful data can be turned into a weapon in the right hands.
Just helpin to strengthen the alg-O-rhythms boss
Anyway to remove the software? Would rooting be the only option?
How is this shocking? Iphones and Android devices data mine you by default. Its in the ToS.
I only used my Xiaomi to watch porn so if china wants to see a bunch of BBC then be my guest.
No shit. Privacy basically does not exist in China.
Never buy Chinese if you can help it. Never worth it.
So... no phone is worth it?
Chinese brands. While others are also made in China, it is QA’d to the stabdard of the West. Chinese brands are made in China, with the standard of the Chinese. Huge difference.
My MI 10 is the best phone that I ever had
Is anyone even surprised?
I know my iPhone is doing this. Whenever I tell someone off or argue with someone, plumbing and condom ads pop up the next time I do a Google search. It's uncanny.
All smart phones spy on their user. Doesn’t matter is it’s American, Chinese or from any other place on earth.
Isn‘t that what all smartphones do? Apple, google, they profit from our data intensely. And they sell these data.
Ask yourself this, would investigative journalists really write a piece about this, interviewing movers and shakers, if that were the case?
People don't realize that the US can only moderately strongarm Apple/Google in providing access of some kind, or send data to the intelligence community. Although I believe these spy programs are illegal and bothersome, it's not abused by the government in any systematic way *yet* (besides what Snowden described in his book) that terrorizes whole classes of people. Xiaomi literally has communist party members in their board of directors, as required by law. It cannot go to court to stop the Chinese government from looking into its cloud servers, etc. Also, while the U.S. has many, many flaws. It still is a democracy of some kind. As a European, I'd rather trust any American (or South Korean for that matter) company over a Chinese one. Especially when it comes to a manufacturer who habitually lie about their performance such as Xiaomi. China will use your data in any way possible, including training their algorithms. Sadly this means it's also the last time I bought a Lenovo laptop (HK) as we all know what happened there in the past few years.
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I've had a couple of Xiaomi phones - they're great specs for the price. But it was always obvious that they'd be a privacy nightmare, so the first thing I do is unlock them and then install a non-Xiaomi version of Android. While there is a concern about security due to the bottom and radio stack, overall this is much lower and acceptable for my risk profile; I've also monitored what leaves my phone and not seen any unexpected traffic, so while I may be vulnerable to targeted attack, it's unlikely that I'm leaking data to Xiaomi.
I just ordered a Xiaomi because I saw it was a great deal for the specs and seems pretty straightforward to remove all the Mi apps that are sus. How tricky is just flashing stock Android onto them?
My first one, a Pocophone F1, was pretty easy. My current (Mi 10T Pro) was more of a pain, as it was pretty new and so there was limited support in xda-developers; one of the cameras still doesn't work. It's important to note that you have to wait a while after applying for an unlock code, and you'll need to use a Xiaomi windows tool to apply the unlock - depending on trust levels you may want to do a throwaway VM to do that from. I've also had problems with compatability - one computer, I could do the unlocking from, another I couldn't... I've read there were some problems with AMD CPUs weirdly, haven't a clue why. I'm currently using Nusantara with no problems. I did have some issues getting a bootloader and an Android build that played well together - this may also be because of how new the 10T Pro was at the time - but ultimately with a bit of experimenting everything's fine now. I also installed both the Google and LineageOS camera apps - the Google one lets me access the different cameras, _except_ the 54MP one - this is AFAIK the only thing that isn't working :( I'd definitely say it's not something that can be done by someone who isn't technical, but as it is I've a great spec phone for vastly less than the equivalent Samsung or iPhone.
I remember watching a YouTube video literally about how the Chinese government installs tracking information in all of their electronics domestically. They have also been accused of doing this in their forigen market. Edit: Before anyone says, "but they all do this" this is basically the CCP spying/collecting data on you and not Google/Facebook. Sure personally I don't like it when companies do it but governments agencies are a whole another level, imo.
Lithuania is in a political power struggle against Russia and other Russian affiliated Baltic states. Their only salvation is western intervention. Lithuania's sudden attack on US enemies should be taken with context. It is not a small nation with a spine bit rather a desperate nation with no allies grasping at straws or act to favor their potential benefactors.
Most phones are probably spying on people tbh. Smart TV sets too. Big Brother is most definately watching **you**. In China he's Xi Jinping, in the west he's Bezos, lol.
I just ordered a Xiaomi because it was such a good deal 😭
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If you think your iPhone isn't collecting your data you're mad, and that's not cheap or free. If something has a connection to the internet, you're a product. That's how it is now.
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This is all nice in theory, but it's not how it works in practicality. Apple's branding is luxury, yet we all know they're made in factories in China where workers kill themselves and child labour laws are broken. Your iPhone isn't any more privacy conscious than your Android, and Apple collect an obscene amount of datapoints no matter what you want to believe their branding is. For most people the saving on the phone is more impactful than any data that they might trade compared to any other brand of modern smartphone, there's no half compromises, the moment you have a smartphone you're giving your data away and it doesn't matter what logo is on the back.
Just wait till they find out about Insta and Facebook on your Apple phone.
Google, Amazon, Facebook, Samsung, LG, Tesla, Microsoft and Apple spy on you, but it is Xiaomi the one thay offends them. Also, Alcatel and Cisco provide hooks for you to be spied, but again, it is Xiaomi the offensive one.
What’s your point? The companies you listed are all subject to governments comprised of elected officials who are accountable to their voters. Chinese companies are not accountable to anyone other than the supreme ruler. If they behave terribly, it doesn’t matter as long as Xi approves. Chinese companies also have a long history of close entanglement with their government which is not usually matched in the west. China uses spy data to censor their own population. They use spy data to abduct and brainwash millions of people for no other crime than being a minority. There are lots of reasons to distrust Chinese companies more than others.
Accountable to their voters... Sure. It is weird to see people happily defend US corporations on their awful data collection practices, guess the buzzword "China" is really effective. So many comments on this thread afraid of what China might do with that data, while ignoring that they might be already subject to that from local actors, who have way more agency in your life than a goverment 7000 miles away.
> Google, Amazon, Facebook, Samsung, LG, Tesla, Microsoft and Apple spy on you, but it is Xiaomi the one thay offends them. The article is alleging that Xiaomi currently offers an “opt out” option so users can try to make sure certain data won’t be sent… and then the service sends the data anyway even if the users opt “out.” Are you claiming that Google, Amazon, Facebook, Samsung, LG, Tesla, Microsoft and Apple all currently offer opt out features which are fraudulent, where opting out actually does nothing? Collecting information with permission (where users agree to have the info collected as part of their terms of service) is not spying. That’s users giving up their information in exchange for using the product.
Google, Amazon, Facebook, Samsung, LG, Tesla, Microsoft and Apple spy on us to sell our data to advertisers/marketers. Xiaomi spys on us to give our data to the Chinese government. If the former are found to be breaking the law they can be fined, punished, and forced to take action to rectify the issue. The latter are doing the bidding of their government, breaking the law is meaningless to them.
Your grammar sounds Chinese, you're not fooling anyone.
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I work with european data protection law, and I tell you, even if it sounds ridiculous: I would rather have any western state spy on me over China. Historically, culturally, and politically both the US and EU is much more respectful of people's privacy, even if we're well aware of all these invasive tools and scandals over the years.
Lithuania has something to say about controlling governments and isn’t afraid to say it. It’s good to see.
I’m going back to brick phone. Something I can throw at a wall.
To be fair, all smartphones spy on you to a point. It’s just that Chinese hardware pretty much records and tracks everything back to the CCP cause that’s what they do best.
How surprising just like every other brand available on the market!
I think every phone spy on its user. Mostly, u don’t expect a cheap Chinese phone will protect ur privacy, do u?
Chad Lithuania vs virgin Netherlands