171–180 of 505 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, I meant is it allowed by Chinese law to NOT spy for the government. As I understand it, to be allowed to operate in China as a Chinese company, you are under the obligation to provide any information you collect to the gov't upon request. Is that not the case?
Australia has similar laws also.
This paragraph stood out to me: > The intention here seems to be that aigt is the timestamp when the ID was generated. So if that timestamp deviates from current time by more than 7776000000 milliseconds (90 days) a new ID is going to be generated. However, this implementation is buggy, it will update aigt on every call rather than only when a new ID is generated. So the only scenario where a new ID will be generated…
I know Xiaomi is not the best brand to buy for privacy, but I consider their products one of the best in terms of value for money
I own a few Xiaomi devices, I simply install Blokada on each one of them and I think you would be surprised by how many non Chinese domains it blocks, Google being one of the worst offenders.
EDIT:
see this screenshot
EDIT 2: paradoxically knowing that Xiaomi is a Chinese company make buyers more aware of the privacy risks involved. It breaks that false sense of security associated with electronic devices that many people believe in.
I truly don't understand, from a security and privacy perspective, why would anyone outside of China would voluntarily choose to run closed-source software from a company that's subject to domestic laws and regulations in China. The MSS is no joke. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=china+mss... This is the same reason that Zoom is banned at my workplace and many other partner companies. You've actual…
Could it be the same reason anyone outside of the US would voluntarily choose to run close-source software from a company that's subject to domestic laws and regulations in the US? The ECPA is no joke.
This paragraph stood out to me: > The intention here seems to be that aigt is the timestamp when the ID was generated. So if that timestamp deviates from current time by more than 7776000000 milliseconds (90 days) a new ID is going to be generated. However, this implementation is buggy, it will update aigt on every call rather than only when a new ID is generated. So the only scenario where a new ID will be generated…
I'm writing this from a Xiaomi smartphone. I know Xiaomi is not the best brand to buy for privacy, but I consider their products one of the best in terms of value for money I own a few Xiaomi devices, I simply install Blokada on each one of them and I think you would be surprised by how many non Chinese domains it blocks, Google being one of the worst offenders. EDIT: see this screenshot https://imgur.com/a/UO0BGCy E…
I recently bought a Xiaomi phone (Poco m3) for development. I was shocked to learn that in order to enable USB debug mode in developer settings, I needed to BOTH : 1) make a Xiaomi account with and 2) insert a SIM card to the device (!) Is that not insane? Other people seem to think so too: https://android.stackexchange.com/a/186052 Apparently the only alternative to this is rooting the device, which may break it.
Xiaomi phones have unlockable bootloaders, so rooting is really trivial, but guess what? You need a Xiaomi account to unlock the bootloader too! And they make you wait several days to do it. And no, you can't break an Android device by rooting it. Worst case you'll have to reflash the system partition through recovery.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm writing this from a Xiaomi smartphone. I know Xiaomi is not the best brand to buy for privacy, but I consider their products one of the best in terms of value for money I own a few Xiaomi devices, I simply install Blokada on each one of them and I think you would be surprised by how many non Chinese domains it blocks, Google being one of the worst offenders. EDIT: see this screenshot https://imgur.com/a/UO0BGCy E…
How do you whether Xiaomi's spyware doesn't bypass Blockada ?
But according to the logs on my router Blokada is working.
p.s. blokada actually also blocks ads on the formula 1 official app that are served through websockets
I truly don't understand, from a security and privacy perspective, why would anyone outside of China would voluntarily choose to run closed-source software from a company that's subject to domestic laws and regulations in China. The MSS is no joke. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=china+mss... This is the same reason that Zoom is banned at my workplace and many other partner companies. You've actual…
Xiaomi phones are frighteningly popular here in Russia because they're very cheap. Like, a-phone-could-not-cost-this-little cheap. A 7000₽ (around $100) phone? Why not, seems legit! And not many people really understand what Xiaomi is actually doing to offset that cost. Heck, when you open the built-in calculator app in MIUI, it has a freakin privacy policy and refuses to operate if you don't accept that. Same for th…
I am truly appalled at the level of discussion from intellectuals as I consider on HN. Comments here are repeatedly evaluating whether the same thing would apply to US. I expect more from HN. Can we please discuss the problem in isolation and especially the interesting technical bits? Ask yourself, this kind of exploitation is bad regardless of whether any country does something similar. It's anti-user in every possi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not defending Xiaomi in general, but it's worth mentioning that the stock calculator in MIUI (at least when I last used it) was much more than just a traditional calculator. It had all kinds of sophisticated functionality that goes beyond our arithmetic, such as currency conversion, which obviously requires network and an api that might very well be third party and require a privacy policy. So while I assume they're…
Uh. An API that provides currency exchange rates is a textbook case of a read-only API. Unless that privacy policy is the nonsensical "we receive and process your IP address" (or course you do, that's how the internet works, duh), it has no reason to have one because no data flows in that direction.
I truly don't understand, from a security and privacy perspective, why would anyone outside of China would voluntarily choose to run closed-source software from a company that's subject to domestic laws and regulations in China. The MSS is no joke. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=china+mss... This is the same reason that Zoom is banned at my workplace and many other partner companies. You've actual…