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Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use

forbes.com

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Re: Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use

#111

Post by djrogers »

mekster wrote: post #106
thelittleone wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I found this wiki page with a list of smartphone manufacturers by Country. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_phone_brands_... I’ve visited Taiwan for work quite a few times and met with some of the big tech manufacturers. Very professional teams of engineers and a beautiful country. It would be super interesting if a Taiwanese manufacturer developed a smartphone + ecosystem whose selling point was…

How much influence does China have over Taiwan? Can they completely decline any malicious orders?

> How much influence does China have over Taiwan?

Right now their only influence is financial, which Taiwan work pretty hard to resist where possible.

Re: Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use

#112

Post by climb_stealth »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #99
pingec wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any resources describing what you lose and gain by installing LineageOS? I'd like to know what will stop working before I try it out...

It has been a long time since I used stock Android, but depending on your phone you don't lose much. The base install doesn't have any google apps, but adding them is simple. The biggest loss is in manufacturer unique apps, which can also be seen as a gain considering how companies like Xiaomi use those apps. Besides that, there can be some security gain if set up properly, I think some additional configuration tweak…

Hah, getting rid of manufacturer specific apps is half the reason for me to install Lineageos in the first place.

That as well as much better battery life and more control over what apps are and aren't allowed to access.

Re: Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use

#113

Post by Larrikin »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #55
amoshi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Root and then get flagged by Google's SafetyNet, preventing you from Netflix, banking apps etc? That's a brave but big sacrifice

Systemless root + root hiding is a thing. I run a custom rom and pass safety check and have access to all my apps including banking.

Any information on this. I thought rooting was essentially dead

Re: Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use

#114

Post by CamperBob2 »

mekster wrote: post #104
andrepd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Netflix Hah. If properly paying for films requires you to install quasi-rootkits that spy 24/7 on your personal life, and pirating gives you a high-quality .mkv you can play anywhere you want, I damn fucking well know which one I'll choose. "Brave but big sacrifice"? That's just devaluing those words.

You forgot to add that your choice is damaging the innocent content creators.

Maybe those innocent content creators will think twice at contract renewal time, then.

Re: Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use

#115

Post by djrogers »

TLightful wrote: post #23

For those more expert than I, is Apple any better in this regard? If not, which mobile is ideal?

> For those more expert than I, is Apple any better in this regard?

Yes, and unequivocally so. Apple is not know to track browsing behavior, search terms, etc. Most of the data that your phone collects about you either remains in your phone (that’s why they’ve been shipping with NPUs for several years - they do A lot of machine learning in device rather than in-cloud) or is analyzed using differential privacy mechanisms.

The amount of data that Apple refuses to collect in Apple Maps for example is astounding. Start and end points of any journey are not used for example. Your trip is broken up into a bunch of segments, and only the middle ones are analyzed for traffic pattern, and even then only after being anonymized.

And most of the details behind all of this are published in a well written and frequently updated privacy whitepapers.

[1] https://www.apple.com/privacy/features/

Re: Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use

#116

Post by djrogers »

fulyscentedking wrote: post #57

Don't use Xiaomi, Huawei or other Chinese smart phone brands if you don't want to your information collected by those Chinese companies and the CCP. That being said Google, Apple and other American companies collect your information too, maybe not as bad, just maybe. We really need good free and open source OS options for smart phones. Like the GNU/Linux options available on desktops.

> That being said Google, Apple and other American companies collect your information too

Can you point to examples of Apple collecting your browsing behavior or other similar data?

Re: Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use

#117

Post by thefounder »

mikestew wrote: post #2

There's too much to quote, but scroll down to Xiamoi's responses. Man, that is the quintessential example of gaslighting. "No we didn't, that's not true at all. Well, we kinda did, but it's 'anonymized', so it's okay." "But we have video of your device sending data to..." "...but, but, anonymized!" "I thought you said you weren't sending data at all, now it's just anonymized browser data, but we see your devices send…

Rome was not built in a day! They need time to aquire the sophistication of the US data brokers.

Re: Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use

#118

Post by Talanes »

mekster wrote: post #104
andrepd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Netflix Hah. If properly paying for films requires you to install quasi-rootkits that spy 24/7 on your personal life, and pirating gives you a high-quality .mkv you can play anywhere you want, I damn fucking well know which one I'll choose. "Brave but big sacrifice"? That's just devaluing those words.

You forgot to add that your choice is damaging the innocent content creators.

The piracy is really incidental. No one who chose privacy over Netflix would suddenly reverse that choice if they couldn't pirate content. Especially given that we are talking about phones, does anyone find watching Netflix on their phone actually ideal?

Re: Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use

#119

Post by thelittleone »

grawprog wrote: post #102
thelittleone wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents option would likely get around privacy regulations in some countries. So they can do the “much more work” you mentioned and also sell decent hardware for zero down on a contract, getting a bigger total market and more surveillance info.

I think that comes down to cost of work vs. fines at that point and which would cost more. If the fines are cheaper they may just opt for them.

Agree. Sadly this business mentality is global one (not only limited to China). "Doing wrong is ok, ideally it's more profitable". The cost of doing ethical business appears to be higher and that cost has to be passed on to the consumer it seems consumers as a whole tend to care more about low price than ethics or privacy. Because there is little or no value attributed to ethics / privacy.

Re: Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use

#120

Post by vageli »

Nextgrid wrote: post #92
fastball wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkm8 is a tethered exploit, so probably not super useful if you want to sideload another OS and not have a bad time.

I remember back in the days of the iPhone 3G(s?) there was an attempt at a battery-powered dongle that could re-jailbreak a phone in the field in case of a reboot. The same technology could be built into a battery case or similar, not to mention recent technological advances mean it can be done in a small package the size of a Lightning connector or a Yubikey and you can carry it on your keyring.

Does this mean you'd have to walk around with an unlocked bootloader all the time?
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