Sorry, but... it's not the same thing Google and Facebook are doing from the last forever?
Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)
321–330 of 505 posts
Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)
#322Are all chinese products spyware? Yes, they are. Don't use chinese brands for phones, software, etc.
Exactly! Fully agree with you pid_0. People, please just use Google Chrome and stop with all these Chinese spyware!
This comments section is getting hit hard with people trying to deflect by using Google Chrome as a scapegoat.
Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't pretend any other country have as much surveillance capability as the US does. There are levels to the awfulness and not everyone is at final boss level. Most are random green scrubs comparatively.
> Don't pretend any other country have as much surveillance capability as the US does. The level of surveillance in Xinjiang vastly exceed that of anywhere else in the world except for military installations.
You're drawing a parallel that doesn't exist. Xinjiang is a physical location that is controlled entirely by them.
US (or any) surveillance, especially over data, requires no such ownership or control.
Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)
#324I 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…
It's not really that a phone could not cost this little. Xiaomi's pricing model is pretty transparent, they make a 5% or so profit from each device and also monetize via UI ads.
It's more that consumers around the world have been brainwashed into believing huge markups are the default and must be accepted.
That of course does not alleviate the data collection concerns about Xiaomi, but it is unfair to say that given the production apparatus to produce at scale and the ability to absorb losses initially, it is not possible to make devices this cheap.
Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Went through this recently. Had to download xiaomi unlock software to unlock the bootloader. Probably sent an image of my hard drive back to china in the process. And the 7 day wait period. Really is an example of price too good to be true because they collect your data and probably get huge government subsidies to do so. Nice phone though once you flash it.
>Probably sent an image of my hard drive back to china in the process.
Come on. Do better.
Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)
#326Related to Xiaomi, the company is also doing some sketchy things in the smart home space under their brand "Aqara". I use HomeKit in my apartment and opted for Aqara branded wireless buttons and temp/humidity sensors because of the attractive hardware and good reviews. The devices require a wi-fi connected hub, not too strange for things that use Zigbee, so I gave that a go. Well, on cursory examination, the Aqara/Xi…
Hahaha holy shit
Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)
#327Chinese browser collects your data? Spyware. American company collects your data? $1,400,000,000,000 valuation. This reminds me of how we call Russian billionaires "oligarchs" but we just call American billionaires...billionaires.
Chinese browser collects data for CCP which will use it for spying and for action against you, your family and your country. American company will collect data to show you ads and profit. Are they really same?
to show you ads and profit, filter what you see online, decide your eligibility for housing and credit, imply your guilt by association or poor classification... and so on.
Don't try to whitewash it.
Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Purism is never going to end up with fully open source baseband firmware. It's not going to happen because the radios are subject to several regulations which means customers can't be able to modify that firmware. There's going to always be a trust hole.
Who said you cannot? Just do it, and see.
Every radio regulation agency on the planet? Most radio hardware is capable of operating outside of regulated limits. The device firmware is usually what keeps the devices running within their regulated limits and gets those components licenses to be sold. Anyone selling regulated devices running outside of their regulated envelope faces fines and even criminal charges.
Cell phones only work because the millions of devices run within strict limits and behave reasonably. There's not a lot of difference between a properly operating radio and a radio jammer. Purism isn't going to find a baseband vendor that's going to risk their licenses by allowing for open source firmware.
Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuinely, I really want to see Purism succeed and increasing numbers of competitors in that space, because we need tools that don't require so much blind trust. Whether caused by inept software devs, scope for malicious code / backdoors in firmware, analytics spyware, and whether this stuff is well intentioned or not, if it can be abused, it will be. Open source and verifiable down to the firmware is the only chance…
> Open source and verifiable down to the firmware While I agree with your intent, the problem is that, many open source software is not verifiable. Remember that a Kaggle competitor was openly cheating with his published code? (cf. https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/21/ai_kaggle_contest_che... ) Eventually he got caught, but it's sometimes extremely difficult to spot a well-hidden malicious code in a plain sight. We…
Yeah, you are definitely correct on the lack of verification tools and I hope research on that one day breaks out of academia and into more common usage. The Kaggle story is great. One mildly related thing is Purism's bootloader tampering detection with their "librem key". Naturally it does nothing to verify the running code, but it does feel like knowing you're running the code you thought you were has some merit.
I think maybe some replies have interpreted my comment as naively assuming that open source firmware would would mean complete trust. I just think it is a good step on the journey.
Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, here's the link to the LineageOS device list with installation instructions. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#xiaomi
But why would you have to root and reflash it? Couldn't they, you know, respect their customer instead?
Like which other manufacturer of the size and scale of Xiaomi? Every single one of them has locked bootloaders, Samsung even bundles ads, and all of them without fail use Google Play Services and all kinds of other proprietary nonsense that can and maybe should be categorized as spyware.