Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#481

Post by stanfordkid » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

yyyk wrote: post #480

jessaustin wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha we have sanctions on Cuba for Pete's sake. Sanctions don't imply anything. They do kill thousands of people a month in Venezuela alone [0], with corresponding numbers in a dozen other nations so good job I guess. There was no "gas attack". Some murderous slaving ISIS criminals took a sledgehammer up on the roof, knocked out some holes, and shoved some empty canisters into them. Then they mixed some bleach with s…

The US alone has sanctions on Cuba, nearly the entire world (except Putin and Iran and China) has sanctions on Assad. It's a bit different, you see? Nobody believes the lies regarding the WMD massacres, we know Assad did these (and so much more). It required rebels with no advanced weapons, much less chemical weapons, to attack themselves over and over, while never ever attacking Assad. The Douma massacre in particul…

This debate is stupid. No one understands what is going on in modern geopolitics of the middle east -- including policy czars, and especially your or I. Probably not even the US government. These are gigantic state sponsored operations with foreign governments (e.g Russia), militant organizations.

As an example -- consider that ISIS was shipping ~$160 million in crude oil via smuggling routes to China. Even with all our power, it is not trivial to track such things.

What I am saying is that there are interests here that are enormous and impossible to understand.. some not even based upon nation-state and totally a-political.

The fact that you believe you have a definitive assessment regarding the gas attacks reveals your naivete.

Take a look at the history of the Assad regime and how we destabilized the region by funding his opposition. Take a look at the history of Egypt or Libya over the past 40 years. One day Gadaffi was an American hero, the next day we are cheering for his downfall. Sensationalist stories of rape/murder/torture being spread through the media. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Look at the sort of stuff we spread during the Gulf War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

This is all to say -- neither of us really knows what we are talking about. But you seem to have a very "good vs. evil" approach to the world that is naive at best.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#482

Post by VRay » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #414

sdoering wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe me - a lot of companies roll MDM just to be able to remotely wipe the device in case it gets lost. A lot of them do not block apps (or remove them).

We use MDM for a lot more than that, though we don't block any apps. And it isn't all about security either. Some of the things - Auto app installs: We have a lot of apps people need for work, like the VPN, Outlook, Teams etc. And apps they need for their specific location or job role. The MDM takes care of installing those so the user doesn't have to figure all this out. - Autoconfiguration: There's a facility calle…

Tangential: Does Lookout actually do anything nowadays? Last I checked a few years back, it just scanned package names against a list of known malware

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#483

Post by LinuxBender » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #348

LinuxBender wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if the owner or organization is found to be breaking the law. Malicious domains are seized every day. Here [1] is one of the most recent examples. Some people try to evade this [2] with varying degrees of success. [1] - https://www.msn.com/EN-US/news/technology/microsoft-secretly... [2] - https://torrentfreak.com/how-to-stop-domain-names-being-seiz...

And if the domains are registered out of the country?

It's less about where you register and more about who is managing the root servers you are using. The article I linked touches on that a little bit.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#484

Post by jml7c5 » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #334

jml7c5 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they wrong?

In my opinion, yes. This is an enormous security vulnerability. TikTok can exfiltrate any data that the user types into any application: passwords, any kind of sensitive data.

I think the objection is to the double-standard, where two apps commit the same infraction but one is assumed to be nefarious.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#485

Post by thephyber » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 10:11 PM UTC

shripadk wrote: post #470

thephyber wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No addiction is greater than national security. I'm tired of "national security" being thrown around willy nilly. If the US government has proof that this is a security risk, they need to be public and transparent with their proof. Anything short of that and I'm not on board with "a ban". That said, I agree that young kids and those who compulsively use social networks are fickle and are likely to move onto another…

> If the US government has proof that this is a security risk, they need to be public and transparent with their proof. Anything short of that and I'm not on board with "a ban". You don't need proof when the CCP is itself giving you so much evidence. Infact I should be asking Americans as to what is wrong with you guys that you are supporting a totalitarian government? The CCP passed a new cyber security law in Janua…

You completely missed the point of what I was saying.

The US government should not ban me from choosing to use a crappy entertainment app. Yes, I realize that an app which is owned by a Chinese company who stores its servers and data in China is governed by Chinese laws.

> what is wrong with you guys that you are supporting a totalitarian government?

I'm not. I'm just saying that anything short of a blanket ban on an entertainment product is not tantamount to "supporting a totalitarian government". You are missing all of the shades of gray. You can't post to HackerNews without using {a phone, a computer, and internet connection, etc} which provided revenue to a company in China, which according to your logic "supports the totalitarian government".

Also there is a philosophy called accelerationism[1] which is the inverse of what you propose, but which may get to the end point (freedom from the CCP) faster than your proposed solution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#486

Post by thephyber » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 10:15 PM UTC

ccktlmazeltov wrote: post #446

thephyber wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about countries versus companies is a different argument depending on whether you are inside or outside Chinese borders. I'm not at all in favor of the US government banning apps unless the US government publicly and transparently shows the proof of security risk first. Anything short of that just appears to be politics and is likely to just be a negotiation tactic. I prefer more privacy controls and transpar…

good point, if anything we need to inspire other countries about the benefits of democracy. A lot of my coworkers here in the US still think that China is doing good stuff.

> if anything we need to inspire other countries about the benefits of democracy.

I think the US needs to look outward to functional democracies before we try to "inspire" other countries with our broken corruption. What the USA calls lobbying other OECD countries is criminal bribery and all other political dysfunction in the US rolls downhill from there.

I'm not blinded to think "China is doing good stuff", but I'm highly suspicious that we should see ourselves as any better than them right now. We are completely unable to address lots of our own {civil, legal, justice, health, economics, ethics, etc} issues.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#487

Post by BookmarkSaver » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 12:02 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #456

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ninja, the biggest (English-language) video game streamer in the world, just posted yesterday that he's deleting TikTok for these concerns. I'm not going to get into whether or not this actually makes sense, but he is a massive celebrity among young millennials/gen-z.

After going to mixer I'm not sure we ought to take Ninja as the authoritative voice on social media platforms

?

He definitely made a ton of money, probably most of the money Mixer was investing in their entire launch, and now he's completely free to triumphantly return to Twitch (or take another deal).

I'm not sure how going to Mixer is a knock on him.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#488

Post by suyash » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 7:53 AM UTC

taurath wrote: post #398

suyash wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple Math, Great number of Indian users, even if ad dollars per person is not as much as in US, overall it is bound to exceed in the long run.

The US has approx 9x overall GDP as India, despite approx .25 the population, for 36x the spending power on a dollar basis. On a PPP basis per capita, its still 9x. In the very long run I'd certainly not bet against that GDP difference getting down to near 4x, but thats certainly multiple lifetimes away in terms of Social Networks

You don't seem to understand what exponential growth rate is like, just look at last 20 years of growth and the difference that was overcome by both China and India against US.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#489

Post by 40four » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #465

40four wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it just hate for China, or politics. Real security researchers are finding really bad things. https://penetrum.com/research https://penetrum.com/tiktok/Penetrum_TikTok_Security_Analysi... https://penetrum.com/tiktok/tiktok_15.2.3_static_analysis.pd... Things they found - Excessive data collection - Privacy policies that allow distribution of said data - Execution of OS commands - Insecure cryptography u…

But are these things any worse than what other major apps do? Other social networking and entertainment apps are crammed full of tracking code, analytics, advertising networks, that all collect excessive user data, don't put it in their privacy policies, etc. And similarly, we hear about bad use of cryptography and SQL all the time. Apps can be pretty bad in general with these things. Now obviously, apps and code in…

Valid points for sure. I can't say how much, or if it is worse at all than Facebook and others. Good reasons not to use any of them in my opinion.

The issue for me is where the data is going and who has control of it. A quote from the article about TikTok trending today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23832183)

All Chinese Internet companies are compelled by the country’s National Intelligence Law to turn over any and all data that the government demands, and that power is not limited by China’s borders. Moreover, this requisition of data is not subject to warrants or courts, as is the case with U.S. government requests for data from Facebook or any other entity;

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#490

Post by president » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

patrickaljord wrote: post #247

president wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USA doesn't want that. Nothing wrong with having another superpower surpass you but China is not the superpower anyone wants leading the world given their track record.

> China is not the superpower anyone wants leading the world given their track record. Anyone? Really? I think a good number of people on this planet is fed up with the US leading the world with its own track record. Not saying I agree with them but saying no one would be happy to see China surpass the US is wrong in my opinion.

> but saying no one would be happy to see China surpass the US is wrong in my opinion.

I would say most people who wish to see a free and liberalized world and are well-informed on China's ambitions would not want a world led by them. Obviously, nationalists and people with financial ties/interests in China would.