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Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)

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Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)

#61

Post by sneak »

chomp wrote: post #52
cwhiz wrote: post #29

Chinese 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.

1.) Xiaomi worth billions of dollars, not 1.4 trillion, but way more than most companies. 2.) People call out Google all. the. time. There's an article here weekly about dumping Google, finding alternatives, praying for antitrust regulation, etc. 3.) We don't commonly call billionaires who live in the middle east, china, and other non-western countries "oligarchs", do you know why? Why are you so upset about Xiaomi g…

I see people calling out Google regularly but rarely is Chrome explicitly termed "spyware", although it very much is: I had to configure G Suite managed browser settings recently and there are like 4 different backdoor ways that big G can "incidentally" process your web traffic and keystrokes: enhanced safe browsing, image alt text accessibility service, uploading your downloads to a scanning service, browser profile history sync, "make the web better" history upload opt-in, et c et c et c.

We should be more consistent in our terminology.

Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)

#62

Post by stevewodil »

chomp wrote: post #52
cwhiz wrote: post #29

Chinese 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.

1.) Xiaomi worth billions of dollars, not 1.4 trillion, but way more than most companies. 2.) People call out Google all. the. time. There's an article here weekly about dumping Google, finding alternatives, praying for antitrust regulation, etc. 3.) We don't commonly call billionaires who live in the middle east, china, and other non-western countries "oligarchs", do you know why? Why are you so upset about Xiaomi g…

>1.) Xiaomi worth billions of dollars, not 1.4 trillion, but way more than most companies.

They're referring to Alphabet's (Google) market cap, not Xiaomi's.

Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)

#63

Post by serf »

yumraj wrote: post #51
cwhiz wrote: post #29

Chinese 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?

American agencies routinely collect data from the internet that results in actions against people.

One could say the motives are different, but to act as if American groups collect data purely for profit isn't true.

>Are they really the same?

No, but acting similarly doesn't imply identical similarity.

Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)

#64

Post by neltnerb »

walrus01 wrote: post #44
serial_dev wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, people give US companies way to much slack... But then what am I supposed to do if I'm European? The US and China pretty much covers the mobile market (and what's not covered is still not European).

From a purely pragmatic point of view: If you're European...? Consider that your country is likely either already a five eyes member, or a "five eyes plus" member with a historical record going back 45+ years of intelligence/law enforcement data sharing between the various NATO governments' intelligence agencies. And take a risk calculation, based on what you're doing in your life, if all your metadata and traffic wa…

From a purely pragmatic point of view, a lot of especially Eastern Europe and Eastern Germany are viscerally aware that "anything you're doing socially, religiously, politically" will always somehow include something illegal and worrying about surveillance results in self-censorship.

I really don't think that's unreasonable, the fall of the berlin wall was within living memory. I hope that the NSA isn't going to do anything too, but the idea that they can't or won't is clearly not true. Staying under the radar might feel pragmatic, but I think a lot of people realize that's entirely inadequate with constantly shifting political environments.

Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)

#65

Post by dheera »

aroman wrote: post #11

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.

That's terrible. Is it possible to even root it without enabling debug mode though? I've always had to use "adb reboot-bootloader" to get into the bootloader because the stupid key combination doesn't seem to work on recent phones, or maybe it's just that my fingers aren't fast enough.

Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)

#66

Post by tkinom »

I have a 5 years old oppo phone and decide to use it as podcast device. A few odd thing about this phone:

1) My Google, IG accounts both sent me security alert about successful login attempt from from Thailand, Vietnam. I 100% sure I only created the IG from this phone once and have not used that password from anywhere else. IG Username / password was taken from this phone and attempt to be login from somewhere else.

2) I can't get the phone to disconnect from wifi. I put the phone on airplane mode, disable wifi, bt, etc. Manually change the wifi password to something else. it always successfully reconnected back after a few days with old password. There are logic in the phone can try very hard to state connected online. It remembers old password and successfully connect successfully with it after a few days.

   Only rename the wifi ap in my router seems to finally permanently disconnect it from the network.
3) I have let the phone back online and created Google account that is 100% unique to this phone. Love know how long would it take for the login attempt for that G account from Thailand/Vietnam start to show up.

Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)

#68

Post by tiagod »

La1n wrote: post #25
walrus01 wrote: post #7

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…

I agree with your statement, but I'd like to get it a bit further. Why run any closed-sourced software from (or have servers in) countries that can request you data without a fair trial (e.g. secret courts). I feel just as uncomfortable about national security letters and the NSA/CIA as the MSS, this from someone who is not living in China or the US. I do think this shows the perks of open source software and being a…

Can you tell me which countries definitely won't force you to secretly do things you don't want to in matters of national security?

Re: Are Xiaomi browsers spyware? Yes, they are (2020)

#70

Post by gruez »

aroman wrote: post #11

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.

>2) insert a SIM card to the device (!)

You need to insert a SIM AND use mobile data on it (ie. turn off wifi, enable mobile data). Just inserting a dummy SIM card won't work.

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