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Elephant in the room is of course the amount of data that is sent to the u.s. from phones in the rest of the world. Hardly a surprise that China is getting in on the action too.
Question for HN: I'm in the market for a new Android phone. If I want to avoid this sort of thing, are there manufacturers I should steer clear of?
Android is pretty much a wasteland outside of the Nexus/Pixel line. Ignoring security and privacy, you just have a lot of shovelware involved along with a lack of commitment to timely, or if any, updates.
I would feel confident a Nexus/Pixel is a secure and nonsense free as a phone running CyanogenMod. Of course, that's difficult to prove, but historically we haven't seen anything like this on a Nexus/Pixel device.
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This seems very similar (or perhaps even worse) than the fact pattern in the HTC/Carrier IQ case. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2013/02/... Did you provide the Federal Trade Commission with an advance copy of your report, or just DHS? If not, why not?
We did work with DHS and notify all the parties ahead of the press release. We also remember carrierIQ ! We have a comparison table here: http://www.kryptowire.com/adups_security_analysis.html
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Don't assume malice. This would be considered completely normal in China, both legally and culturally. You would a have hard time explaining the concept of privacy to them. This is likely not some big conspiracy.
The flip side of that argument is that the fastest way to explain the concept of privacy to a manufacturer that spies on you, is to stop buying their devices. Consumers don't need to assume a conspiracy in order to communicate their preferences.
This can also be read outside the states as follows: For about $50, you can get a smartphone with a high-definition display, fast data service and, according to security contractors, a secret feature: a backdoor that sends all your text messages to the USA every few seconds . Security contractors recently discovered preinstalled software in some Android phones that monitors where users go, whom they talk to and what…
linuxbsdos.com/2016/11/05/the-samsung-android-tablet-that-will-never-access-the-internet/
You cannot have privacy and security without free/libre software. While such doesn't doesn't guarantee privacy or security, operating systems that make an effort to build the system entirely from source without any proprietary components are much less likely to have a problem like this slip through the cracks of a large, active development community. Unfortunately, currently the only Android operating system to do th…
And while many things could most certainly be discovered by extensive, costly audits, that someone has to pay for...
OS code bases are huge.
How difficult would it be to hide functionality like this in some obscure code that's camouflaged as something else?
How hard would it be to automatically install an app that does this after first boot, disguised as some self updating or analytics feature?
Not very, I think.
If someone puts an Android fork online, who has the time to go through the changes to discover something like this?
Also, such features could even easily be placed on a tiny, dedicated chip inside the phone, completely apart from the OS.
If you don't build the hardware yourself, component by component (assuming that the components themselves are trustworthy), and audit every single LOC in the OS, something can always slip by.
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Somehow the USA manages that almost every key IT corporation has their headquarters in the states sooner or later.
I think that's because market is more mature and people adopt thing quicker, so it's easier to sell more at the beginning of a business.
What's the big deal? Google does this on a much bigger scale and of course shares its data with the US government when asked. Why is it suddenly scary when a Chinese company does the same?