In a surprise to absolutely nobody, China spies on their people.
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
5 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
77795 readers
2595 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
As opposed to which country?
And everyone's people
TIL this only happens in China
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
As if other keyboard apps are any different, I don't think Microsoft bought SwiftKey just for fun?!
Really? Isn't this kind of thing scandalous enough to tank companies?
It's in their EULA read their terms of services
I live in China and this software is cancerous not just in the encryption failure, it also nestles into a computer like a trojan. Creates 2 fallback installations and will reinstall itself after removal if you reboot in between, unless you get rid of all 3 installations at once, where they are deliberately trying to obfuscate the uninstall button (triple confirmation, swapping the confirm/cancel buttons and button background colors, etc.).
It's a nasty piece of crap that come preloaded on any phone (android, at least) and Windows-PC here.
It's time to switch to Linux!
I mean the CCP is aiming to have people use Kylin? If the government and the entire populace starts using Linux instead we'll just see the same BS on Linux instead. It's not an OS/platform issue, but an issue of bad actors.
On the plus side maybe then it’ll finally be the year of the Linux desktop.
monkeys paw curls
Then they'll install the Linux version. People here are so indoctrinated, they like it.
Don't worry, there is also a Linux version.
Oof
It's stories like this that don't surprise me as much as make me ask: How the fuck do you store and process this much data to get anything useful out of it.
You just save the first 50 digits typed after some email is typed, and you have all the passwords you need!
This only applies if a username is a email
And if it is then what happens when people actually email someone? Autocorrect during login?
I don't think they're saying that method would yield 100% clean data but it would give you all the "necessary" data with the absolute bare minimum storage requirement. At some point people will log into their email and for most people if you have their email password you have the password they use for everything
And the Platinum Award for Least Surprising News Headline goes to...
I don't get it? Why are they talking in the article about not using the right type of encryption. The problem isn't the encryption, but the fact that it is sending your keystrokes to the mothership, right?
The people here acting like their Gboard doesn't do the same is so funny.
Edit : never used nor installed tiktok.
It probably doesn't though. Obviously it's closed source making it harder to tell what's actually happening, but there's nothing stopping security analysts from looking at network usage and such. I would imagine that Google doesn't install a keylogger on every Android phone, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they don't want the bad publicity and lawsuits when it would inevitably be discovered.
they do collect usage stats by default though.
which include typed sentences passed through their ai model and words usage counts.
it can all be turned off and gboard seems to respect these options. it doesn't access online services unless requested with these options off.
God bless gdpr
Imagine willingly installing a keylogger, lol
So use Fcitx 5 Android instead. It's a open source IME application without requesting any permission except Notification, especially without network permission.
https://github.com/fcitx5-android/fcitx5-android
"Notice the lack of surprise."
China being China, no surprise here.
Naomi Wu has literally been talking about pwnd Chinese IMEs for years in her sidechannel critiques of Signal.
So when the Chinese do it it's scary, but when the Americans do it it's just "established practice"?
Whataboutism doesn't really apply when pointing out a double standard. It's true that both places shouldn't do the bad thing, but it's more about the individual's reaction to that thing depending on who does it. The average US citizen will criticise the CCP for doing plenty of the same things their government currently does, or has done in the past, that they support.
Furthermore, it's important to note that when this kind of thing happens, people treat it as China's government's fault, but when Tesla cars explode, people don't consider that the US government's fault.
Neither of the groups should be allowed to do it.
What's the deal with Android "keyboards"? Why is it just an app that you can install? And why can it have more functionality/permissions from the OS beyond just being a local keyboard? As an iOS user this is very bizarre and foreign to me.
I feel like every time the topic of Android keyboards (again, why is this a thing?) comes up it's some kind of big spyware thing. Seems like most every app on Android and iOS is spyware anyway, of course.
As someone that hasn't drank that Apple flavoured Kool-aid, I can't understand why people thinking the inabality to use a device you own in the way you want to is considered a feature.
All aspects of android (pretty much) are customisable. It's not the os that is the problem, but the developers who program on all this telemetry.
There keyboards on android are much more useful than what's available on iOS. There is a similar issue with launchers. They, by their nature, need more access to other apps and more permissions. In most cases, that means more features, but meta and Microsoft have launchers too...
I use android and iOS. I find both good but the customisable nature of android is what drove me away from iOS.
Didn't swiftpad or whatever its called send every key pressed to Microsoft?
Not a China shill. China is horrible. Microsoft less so as they don't commit genocide in slow motion. But still, I think this sort of thing is more common than we think.
Use FOSS.
I feel like there should be a Lemmy version of everything now
I use Florisboard
What do you expect from leftists?
Being left or right doesn’t make you authoritarian. Being authoritarian makes you authoritarian.
"right wing" authoritarians are just leftwing.
No
ROFL posts the political compass. How old are you, twelve?