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China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

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Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#161

Post by skylark »

FabHK wrote: post #158
greggman wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is any service better? Apple Pay?

My understanding is that Apple Pay enables the payment, but Apple does not collect or retain any data such as to whom you paid how much. Here's what Apple's iOS Security Guide say: "Apple Pay is also designed to protect the user’s personal information. Apple Pay doesn’t collect any transaction information that can be tied back to the user. Payment transactions are between the user, the merchant, and the card issuer."…

Two different animals. Apple Pay lets consumers purchase goods from a merchant. Google's offering in that space is Android Pay. Google Wallet is more similar to Venmo in that it's only for peer to peer transactions.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#162

Post by kuschku »

FabHK wrote: post #156
verst wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm German and (as stereotypes would have it) extremely privacy conscious. Having lived in the US for over a decade I've reluctantly come to terms with the lesser privacy standards here. For a long time I refused to keep a lot of information on Facebook as Facebook seemed to only consider privacy as an afterthought after users expressed outrage (I appreciate transparency about the use of data so I can make my own dec…

I wish everyone would just install Signal and Wire - it's not that hard :-/

Signal is not intended to protect from government surveillance, nor is it able to.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#163

Post by iaskwhy »

bad_user wrote: post #141
peteretep wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google allowing apps to read > phone IMEI in Android An unpopular sentiment, but this is why I love iOS. I genuinely don't think any of my apps can meaningfully spy on me without my having told them they may. I even get reminders if I've let an app read my location in the background, to check that's what I want to do.

Even though I like Android more, I have to agree that iOS has had a better privacy story. But even iOS has problems. For example I cannot force apps like Waze or Uber to only use my location while using them, you have to either disable location for them completely, or to allow them to take your location while running in the background. It's an either/or proposition and the result is that Waze and Uber users do have t…

Isn't that good though? It allows competitors to appear with that advantage of having better privacy. I mean, the problem is not the way iOS handles it, it's the way app developers abuse their permissions.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#164

Post by pyrale »

logicchains wrote: post #83
dcposch wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im comparing China to other countries that were similarly poor in 1980-- much of the world, including the second biggest country, India. China did much better than them. I don't think any other society in history has lifted as many people out of poverty in as short a time.

Why not compare China to countries that were similarly poor in the 1950s? China, Korea, Taiwan were comparable then, but Korea and Taiwan have leaped ahead now due to saner government. If anything how poor China is in PPP GDP per capita terms vs Taiwan/Korea should be taken as an indictment of how terrible the government's been.

Because then, you would have to account for geopolitics. China didn't receive the kind of helicopter money non-communist countries in the area received. China (but also, e.g. Vietnam) also got access to consumer markets much later.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#165

Post by idra »

iklos55 wrote: post #149
idra wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. There's Whatsapp for starters, which isn't blocked in China. There's always email. If your Chinese friends are ignorant about privacy, it doesn't mean you need to sacrifice yours. > the utility of using WeChat or Baidu Maps was simply too great "Give me convenience or give me death"

This is amazing - you're saying that Wechat has privacy issues but advertise Whatsapp.

I knew this would come up, but Whatsapp is still miles ahead of Wechat regarding privacy. And especially regarding invasions of privacy where the Chinese government is involved, which I am pretty sure Whatsapp is safe from.

First, Whatsapp advertises to have end-to-end encryption, which Wechat doesn't have. Second, your private Wechat conversations can be used against you as evidence in court, while any evidence collected with NSA tools cannot, since it is technically illegal.

If you want privacy from the US government, then you probably shouldn't use Whatsapp. In any other situation it is vastly superior.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#166

Post by robinson-wall »

bad_user wrote: post #141
peteretep wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google allowing apps to read > phone IMEI in Android An unpopular sentiment, but this is why I love iOS. I genuinely don't think any of my apps can meaningfully spy on me without my having told them they may. I even get reminders if I've let an app read my location in the background, to check that's what I want to do.

Even though I like Android more, I have to agree that iOS has had a better privacy story. But even iOS has problems. For example I cannot force apps like Waze or Uber to only use my location while using them, you have to either disable location for them completely, or to allow them to take your location while running in the background. It's an either/or proposition and the result is that Waze and Uber users do have t…

I don't think iOS is to blame for the binary choice that you get with Uber / Waze. I have some apps which have three choices in the location services settings (Always, While using the app, Never) so it seems like a choice by the developer.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#167

Post by MagnumOpus »

smallnamespace wrote: post #136
logicchains wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not compare China to countries that were similarly poor in the 1950s? China, Korea, Taiwan were comparable then, but Korea and Taiwan have leaped ahead now due to saner government. If anything how poor China is in PPP GDP per capita terms vs Taiwan/Korea should be taken as an indictment of how terrible the government's been.

Because getting something to happen in a large country is much much harder than in a smaller country. China is literally 20 times the size of Korea AND Taiwan. To achieve growth in a small country, you can be nimble and find relatively small market opportunities and then exploit them relentlessly. That simply doesn't scale to 1bn+ people.

> To achieve growth in a small country, you can be nimble and find relatively small market opportunities and then exploit them relentlessly. That simply doesn't scale to 1bn+ people.

Economic reality is actually the opposite of what you state. A big country represents a big domestic market - you don't need export niches or even good products, but can just build to service the internal markets, with massive economics of scale - and then muscle your way into foreign markets when all your corporations are 800lbs gorillas.

If Taiwan is wealthier than the PRC, it is not because their economy and population is so tiny - there is another reason...

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#168

Post by simonh »

wfunction wrote: post #152
lsmarigo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know of anyway to avoid this other than using cash. The speed the sharing takes place is pretty insane as well, I've made purchases of a new brand of X item at my local grocery chain only to have amazon suggest the exact item to me on the same day.

This sounds almost unbelievable. How sure are you that it wasn't suggested for some other reason? And how did they know WHAT you bought, given credit card companies don't get that info?

Agreed, I don't see how that's possible given the strict controls over personally identifiable card purchase data. Somebody would have to be breaking the law.

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#169

Post by pyrale »

idra wrote: post #111
contingencies wrote: post #94

What a silly article: "download the controls to the private sector" indeed. The government already owns the telcos, half the banks, the only domestic interbank transfer system and the only domestic travel reservation system so they have your IMEI, real time location and history, network traffic, bank balance and payment and employment history and travel plans anyway. And that of your friends/relatives. They certainly…

What a silly comment, complete with the mandatory "it's worse in the US" passage that mysteriously appears in half of the comments to China-related articles on HN. Yes, the governments owns telcos etc. Yes, they probably have files on people they consider a threat, such as human rights activists. But to think that all that data is accessible in some kind of coherent manner is ridiculous. This is China, where banks ca…

> Do you really feel safer in a country where you can get jailed without trial, where you can jailed, deported and banned from re-entry based on a urine test at the whim of some provincial government official that you crossed paths with? In China, the biggest threat is the government.

Being foreign to both countries, the difference is not obvious. Formally, this could happen to me in both countries. Even culturally, the "They only do it on strangers, so that's fine" argument before and during the Snowden files makes me doubt of the support I would get as a foreigner (and I'm on the good side of being a foreigner, not being a visible foreigner).

Re: China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

#170

Post by 20andup »

ralfd wrote: post #145
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #81

Oracle maintains a database of personal information for billions of people. The US corporate surveillance web is rich in complexity. Before we judge China, lets make sure we know what we're comparing them to. I highly encourage anyone interested in the subject to watch this talk from last month's Chaos Computer Club Congress. "Corporate surveillance, digital tracking, big data & privacy: How thousands of companies ar…

I would say that forcing someone to use an universal ID provides a way stronger and more reliable form of tracking, than a wibbly wobbly system which needs thousands of marketing companies which maybe fulfill their corporate promises and maybe not.

"wibbly wobbly system which needs thousands of marketing companies which maybe fulfill their corporate promise"

I am afraid that's not how it works. This is not how the government tracks you. The mirror all traffic going brought your internet service provider, that's it. Then it's just a google search to see what websites you have visited.

https://www.ixmaps.ca/nsa.php

Government ID or not, you are being tracked quite easily by the government.

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