If you have any evidence that it does, it would be big news. Please share.
Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
The people here acting like their Gboard doesn’t do the same is so funny.
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
knock@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I mean he’s not wrong, but also not really the same thing. Gboard does send a substantial amount of data about the things you typed to google. It is supposedly anonymous, but they do this to get anylitics, and they use this data to improve the suggestions given to you.
There has been at least one article where someone intercepted the data leaving from Gboard and found it’s either unencrypted or just hashed into something like base64. This was a while back so things hopefully changed.
While google does try not to phone home users passwords, how can you tell what is and isent private?
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Even if i had it, do you honestly think i would waste my life to be completely forgotten and left to rot for disclosing it like Snowden. Yep, no one will ever reveal anything after that shit show.
SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org 1 year ago
I’m going to guess you’re one of the people who defends tiktok and compares it to every other social media app by saying the US government is basically the same as the Chinese government
PopOfAfrica@lemmy.one 1 year ago
I don’t think this post is a defence of China, its a damning of the invasive governments, which the US also has.
It’s a warning that we are one step away from China, and should do something about it.
SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org 1 year ago
I’m not so sure. The China apologists are in every thread like this and I don’t think it’s something to dismiss
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It seems to be a very common fallacy in geopolitics to believe that a rival of the US must automatically be morally better. You see plenty of “left wing” imperialism defenses that blame Ukraine for the invasion and insist they should give up and do whatever Russia wants them to do.
It’s apparently disappointingly complex for some people to believe that X can oppose Y and both of them can be horrible bastards. They can’t take criticism of China or Russia because they automatically see an implicit “America better” that’s not really there.
prole@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
No it’s not a “warning,” it’s just boring old whataboutism.
The first part of your comment is like a textbook example of the fallacy.
Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
It seems, people can’t understand this. Am not American so i have an outside view that’s free from any patriotic feeling and spoon fed propaganda since childhood.
Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I will now answer any questions that boils down to “but we’re the good guys” to “not American”
linearchaos@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not op, I know for sure that China’s been trying to grab as much intelligence as possible going as far as installing sniffing type software in network controllers and servers, and grabbing keystrokes from a keyboard is absolutely despicable and something they would do to grab more intelligence.
The thing I have trouble figuring out is why in the hell people would care about TikTok. What signal intelligence is coming from my wife swiping through 14,000 cat and home organization videos.
Location is turned off The app is sandboxed It’s not allowed to access the camera or the speaker without giving some minor notification that they’re on and people would notice.
I totally get the China will do bad if they can but I fail to see the ultimate danger of TikTok.
Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 1 year ago
From “the olden times” ([Reddit link] (www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/…/iwo1gey/?utm…)]:
The type and scale of the data that TikTok collects is different than other Chinese apps.
There will be replies that talk about advanced ML and predictive algorithms. There will be replies that talk about potential hacks the app can use to bypass iOS or Android policy. That’s a threat, sure, but we don’t even need to go there. We can just focus on the basic data that companies like Google, Meta and TikTok explicitly tell us that they collect in their privacy policy.
Every time you open TikTok, you should assume that the Chinese government knows exactly where you are at that moment, because the app gives them access to your location through GPS. If you use the app frequently, they not only have time and location data, but they know your travel patterns too!
They know who you interact with and who those people interact with. They know what kinds of content you like and what you dislike. They can use this information to intentionally feed you with disinformation in ways that make you more likely to believe it.
The misinformation feed attack risk is not unique to TikTok. Others have already been misused in this exact way. The important difference is that when information is housed by companies like Meta and Google which are incorporated in the US, its use and storage is subject to US regulation. We can simply disallow use and storage of data and practices that we don’t approve of.
If you’ve done something illegal or embarrassing on TikTok, it could be used to compromise you for a foreign nation’s interest. If you are a 20 year old wild child, they won’t have any interest in doing anything with that information right now. In a few decades, if TikTok continues its dominance in social media, China will have compromising information on an uncomfortably high number of powerful leaders and politicians. You don’t even have to do something obvliviously stupid like say something racist or admit to a crime in a DM. For example, with just location data they can know if a politician cheated on their spouse and with whom! Imagine a politician publicly saying that they did not meet with some business leader or politician about some scandalous thing. Well, in a world where everyone has TikTok, the Chinese government knows if that’s a lie or not. In theory Verizon/Meta/Apple wouldn’t know that since that data is purported to be anonymized. Even if they did have that information, it’s hard to imagine any US tech company using it for their own interest. A US company would likely not survive that kind of act - it would be corporate suicide. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine a foreign adversary NOT engaging in that type of blackmail when given the opportunity.
Now consider companies like Tencent. How can information on League of Legends play sessions can be used to blackmail a politician, manipulate an election or foment widespread social unrest? It might be possible, but it’s not easy to think of how it could be done. With TikTok, it’s blindingly obvious how all of those things could happen.
Most other Chinese apps don’t collect anywhere near as much personal and sensitive information. The ones that do collect the same level of sensitive data, like Tencent’s QQ, aren’t used by enough people where it would be realistic to speculate that this information can be used in a similarly widespread and extremely damaging way. Even then, the US government should seriously think through the damage that could be done with the information QQ collects by assuming the Chinese government has complete access to all collected data and hostile intent. With TikTok, you don’t need to spend more than a few seconds thinking about this to frighten yourself.
SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org 1 year ago
I don’t know what you mean by sandboxed but I’m pretty sure it cannot be as private as it seems, even if you’re using a VPN. But regardless, 99.99% of tiktok users are not taking steps to protect their data. hundreds of billions of data points that help an authoritarian government know how people think is nothing to shrug at.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Mobile apps aren’t in the wild west anymore. They don’t get access to the other apps and can’t wander around unlimited on your device without clear permission. If you say no location, they don’t get location. It used to be different, but apple and google are on the same page now and they don’t let apps abuse you without clear permission anymore.
Even pulling your IP and giving them a vague city level location, They’re correlating that with liking 30 second random content videos and music. This isn’t even the level of intelligence you 'd get from FB or Youtube people aren’t searching tictok to see how to use software or edit code or how public infrastructure works. You’re getting organziation, cat videos, kids coming home from the dentist saying crazy things. I just don’t really see it as a big deal.
An_Ugly_Bastard@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The big issue is Google isn’t owned by the state.
ShovelLiz@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
I mean… Does It change anything? They are owned by a board of directors that want profits over anything else
SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org 1 year ago
Yes, not being owned by the world’s most terrifying government turns out to be different than being owned by the world’s most terrifying government. Funny how that works
Atrabiliousaurus@reddthat.com 1 year ago
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Man, Snowden wasted his entire life to tell you USA literally spy on everything you do and when caught their answer was : yeah, so what you gonna do about it, maybe you should do the same.
Hazdaz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I love how people overlook this part. You get all the knuckledraggers who want to claim the US is somehow just as bad as China is.
The anti-American sentiment in here is obnoxious.SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org 1 year ago
I’ve never thought that the knuckledraggers were anti-american. I think they are anti-intellectual. Using tiktok is more important to them than the future of humanity.
Hazdaz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Some of the knuckledraggers are. I guess I should have added that a lot of the edgel0rds like to wrestle some feathers by posting anti-American views.
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 1 year ago
Instead they are about to be their own state.
Btw, companies are absolutistic by default.
echo64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
no they are just compelled by the state and secret courts
sndrtj@feddit.nl 1 year ago
They are the state at this point. So same thing.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Did you read it ? kindly, Share the part with relevant info. I tried to read it but it kept going abouts how Gboard and the Microsoft keyboard are both opaque and you can’t know what data is sent to the server backend.
Also, ever heard of 5,9 and 14 eyes ?
Squirrel@thelemmy.club 1 year ago
Oh shit, Google is sending my stuff to China?
Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
It depends. Ever heard of databrokers ?
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Google doesn’t sell to data brokers. Not yet at least. They have a competitive advantage they will lose if they sold their data (our data) to third parties, especially third party resellers.
KuroiKaze@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Total false take, don’t just say your suspicions like they are facts.
PaigePalisade@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
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.
vox@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
they do collect usage stats by default though.
which include sentences passed through their ai model. (not directly)
it can all be turned off and gboard seems to respect these. it doesn’t access online services unless requested with these options off.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
If you mean by “collect usage stats” train their AI model on-device and send the training result to Google, then yes. If you mean that the actual words get sent to Google’s servers, then no. There was a study shared recently that looked into this. Only metadata about what’s typed is sent. That’s not nothing of course, but it’s not what Tencent does at all.