The most popular Chinese keyboard app which is used by more than 450 million monthly users sends every key typed to Tencent in China.

Comments

• godless@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

  source

  • Ultra980@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It’s time to switch to Linux!

    source

    • dojan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      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.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • ammonium@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Don’t worry, there is also a Linux version.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • godless@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Then they’ll install the Linux version. People here are so indoctrinated, they like it.

      source
  • Anamana@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Do people generally try to circumvent it? Are they too scared to uninstall it? Or do they just not care?

    source

    • godless@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Worse. They think it’s useful.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • boooooboo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      My guess is that it might either be more accurate in predictions or some additional convenience factors that makes typing this typographic language much easier and faster lol.

      Or people are also simply used to it since it’s everywhere.

      source
  • luthis@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Be careful jumping the firewall.

    source

    • godless@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Sure. Foreigners aren’t really sanctioned though, that’s more of a risk for the locals. But even then usually only if they want to get someone disappeared and don’t have anything substantial against them.

      source
• SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Alright China shills, you can stop changing the subject to how Google and the US are the “same”.

  The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city’s major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June and engaged in bloody clashes with demonstrators attempting to block them, in which many people – demonstrators, bystanders, and soldiers – were killed. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.[15][16][17][18][19][20]

  …wikipedia.org/…/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_a…

  If you lived in China you’d likely not know about this, since people who talk about it go to prison.

  Yeah the US is exactly like this so let’s not talk about the Chinese government being awful to their citizens /s

  source

  • dingleberry@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Simple solution is to block lemmygrad and hexbear in your app. That cuts down quite a few tankies and mainlaind Taiwan shills.

    source

    • Notorious_handholder@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Imagine being in Taiwan and having full access to information about China and the west and still shilling for China. Those types of people should be looking for a dominatrix, not a political philosophy…

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • Hype@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Been using lemmy for a few days and I am already feeling the need to do just that.

      source
    • youthinkyouknowme@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      A must have on apps to be able to block/filter instances

      source
    • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      mainland Taiwan

      You must mean West Taiwan. Sadly they refuse to acknowledge the authority of Taiwans government.

      source
  • gmtom@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I mean, ill always say that China is worse than the US. But you can find plenty of examples of the US doing awful things to its people too.

    Like the MOVE bombing en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing

    or The Tusla Massacre that involved law enforcement bombing black neighbourhoods en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

    Or any of the countless of times copes perpetrated mass violence against black people during the civil war era and cracked down harshly on protests.

    Or when the did the same to anti-war protestors during the vietnam war.

    Or the numerous times they experimented on their own citezens such as MK ultra, The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, or any of the dozens upon dozens of radiation experimentation, like when almost 1000 pregnant mothers were injected with radioactive iron, causing many miscarriages and cancers(and thats not the only time they injected pregnant mothers with radioctive material to see if it fucked up the baby), or when inserting radium rods up the nostrils of school children and then observing how their health declined, or when they dosed hundreds of inuit with radioactive iodine to see its affects on the thyroid.

    Like I dont think this makes China’s atrocities any more excusable, but the reverse is true to. The US really isnt much better than China.

    source

    • Stahlreck@feddit.ch ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The US really isnt much better than China.

      The world ain’t just good or bad and there’s various degrees of “bad”. The fact that many US people can even talk about this stuff makes them already just ever so slightly better for many outsiders. This is how it is, neither country is “good” but they align more with western ideals than an authoritarian state which for many of us is bad by default…which it is of course. :)

      source
    • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Shills gonna shill

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • TheHighRoad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      As bad as those incidents were, they weren’t exactly government sanctioned. Police sanctioned, sure, and the government should do more to reign that shit in, but comparing them to Tiennamen is disingenuous at best.

      The Chinese government hates letting its citizens have a voice.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • HellAwaits@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      How much in Nike shoes is Winnie the Pooh paying you?

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • reverendsteveii@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    No one is saying Google massacred protestors, but if you’re gonna be against keyboard apps spying on you it should be irrelevant who they’re spying for. Criticizing shitty things American companies do doesn’t make you a China shill and calling everyone who does it a China shill is intellectually dishonest.

    source

    • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      claiming that the dozen people in this thread falsely equating what China is doing to the things that happen in the US – ignoring that they are very different, and ONLY considering that they are moving attention away from the posted article – is not so much “intellectually dishonest” as it is an intentional lie with a goal. Good bye.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • 13esq@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That’s false equivalence.

    China killing protesters does not make it OK for Google or anyone else to spy on you.

    source

    • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      spy on

      yeah no shit. The point is that they aren’t equivalent, trying to make them so is a destructive distraction

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • SasquatchBanana@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s not what is being pointed. In China, you don’t have freedom of information. They are authoritarian, borderline totalitarian. Yeah, Google spy and the US spy on us but to say America/Google is just as bad is the false equivalence.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • niceboysummer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I found a really great reading list for more in depth perspectives on Tianamen Square Like everything, wikipedia comes with its own bias and is generally not comprehensive when it comes to understanding a subject.

    source

    • SouthernCanadian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The sources are… A bunch of tankie newsletters, a Medium article, and official Chinese reports? LOL talk about bias.

      source
  • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Sir this is a Wendy’s

    Or more specifically, a thread about a phone keyboard.

    But it is true that Google and Microsoft phone home with your key strokes. That’s how they develop their predictive typing and autocorrect.

    source
• Elephant0991@lemmy.bleh.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Image

  source

  • money_loo@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is one of my favorite things about kbin over Reddit. So neat to see gifs in chat.

    source

    • Kalcifer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They’re viewable on Lemmy too!

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • tuoret@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Reddit added the same functionality some time ago, I’m a bit sad it’s a thing here too but oh well. People seem to like it. My favourite thing about reddit was it being text-based though

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • raltoid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If you think that’s a kbin thing, you’ve not used reddit in years, you haven’t looked at anything lemmy, etc.

      source
    • WigglingWalrus@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You could have gifs on Reddit too

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • Nihilore@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I wish there was a setting to get rid of them in the app I use, hate inline images and gifs

      source
    • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s viewable in Memmy for lemmy as well, also been on Reddit for years just not used much due to the culture there dog piling it all the time.

      source
    • cassetti@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      How are you seeing gifs in kbin? All I'm seeing is a url link to the gif and have to click the media icon button next to the URL For it to load...... is there a setting I need to enable to load pictures/gifs automatically?

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • Dasnap@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Image

    source
• nomadjoanne@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Didn’t swiftpad or whatever its called send every key pressed to Microsoft?

  source

  • cunnilingsus@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I agree with the “Use FOSS” part, but I can’t help but notice a double standard thats often taken when these kinds of stories pop up. How come whenever a Chinese compant does something like this, China is always at fault? Why is it never America’s fault when something like this happens with an American company or product?

    source

    • BloodForTheBloodGod@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Just for one thing, Chinese companies are required to have CCP members in their leadership.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • ilikekeyboards@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I wanted to ask if you were born yesterday but I’ll try to be more educative than sassy.

      All companies in China exist purely with the blessing of the political party. No approval, no company. Everything is done by their books.

      source
    • yogurt@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Unexamined racism. “Collectivist asians” and denying Asian individuality is very normal in the US/Europe. Malcolm Gladwell can write a book saying Koreans are culturally incapable of flying an airplane and it’s fine. When Asians have human emotions it’s normal to turn it into some special exoticized thing like “saving face”. White people are individuals, Asians are a horde, nothing in Anglo culture prepares or encourages people to think about Chinese people as a billion individuals wandering around doing stuff for the same reasons you do. They’re a singular alien unit, if you go to war with Japan it’s only natural to lock all the Japanese people in a camp. Basically every book and newspaper article you’ve ever read talks about them they’re all wired together like the Borg, unless you put a ton of effort into critical thinking there’s no reason to escape that assumption.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • Spambox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Think you mean SwiftKey which Microsoft just introduced bing AI into that you can’t turn off. I 100 percent assume they now use all your typing data to train their ai too. They won’t even let you use themes without logging in to an account so I again assume they also tie data to accounts.

    source
  • dx1@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What are the best FOSS options for Android keyboard apps? I’ve been struggling with this lately.

    source

    • nomadjoanne@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I use OpenBoard (it’s available on fDroid. Maybe the play store too).

      I don’t know if it’s the best but I like it. If you type in multiple languages you do need to hit a “language switcher” key on the keyboard to switch to the autocorrect for that language. A very minor complaint. Otherwise it’s great.

      And it will learn swear words. No more ducking ducks.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • sic_1@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Seconded. I use Gboard because it has the same functionality but I have to sandbox it and restrict all internet access via firewall. I still don’t trust it and would prefer a FOSS alternative with the same functionality.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Using FlorisBoard right now, no auto correct but you’ll adapt

      source
  • Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yes that’s why I’ve disabled Internet access for my keyboard since I haven’t found an FOSS one with all the features I want. Not that I need them but they’re nice and blocking network access is built in GrapheneOS anyway.

    source
  • Atticadayz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    How do I use foss? Where do I find it?

    source
• Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The people here acting like their Gboard doesn’t do the same is so funny.

  source

  • 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.

    source
  • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    If you have any evidence that it does, it would be big news. Please share.

    source
  • 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

    source
  • An_Ugly_Bastard@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The big issue is Google isn’t owned by the state.

    source
  • avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It doesn’t.

    source
  • Squirrel@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Oh shit, Google is sending my stuff to China?

    source
  • KuroiKaze@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Total false take, don’t just say your suspicions like they are facts.

    source
• Goodie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

  source

  • toofpic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You just save the first 50 digits typed after some email is typed, and you have all the passwords you need!

    source
  • WarmSoda@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I could be wrong, and this is a generalization of any country you can name, but my impression is data is stored on everyone so when they decide someday to look you up they already have all the data collected. It’s not really processed until needed.

    source
  • perviouslyiner@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    And how can autosuggest / autocorrect be so bad with so much training data

    source
  • BobKerman3999@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They can a “rollup” of the data to coalesce a lot of stuff and still maintaining precision

    source
• 99nights@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  China being China, no surprise here.

  source

  • yoz@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Wait till you hear about US

    source
• thorbot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Oh wow, who would have ever thought they’d do that? What a fucking surprise.

  source
• punseye@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  As if other keyboard apps are any different, I don’t think Microsoft bought SwiftKey just for fun?!

  source
• ObamaBinLaden@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  And gboard or SwiftKey don’t?

  source

  • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    No they don’t

    source
• loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Image

  source
• kicksystem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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?

  source
• herrwoland@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  In a surprise to absolutely nobody, China spies on their people.

  source
• sugarfree@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  These findings underscore the importance for software developers in China to use well-supported encryption implementations such as TLS instead of attempting to custom design their own.

  lol.

  source
• shashi154263@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

  source
• thecam@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Never use a closed source keyboard app. It can read what you send for messages, websites you go to, search engine queries.

  source
• waterbogan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This is news? I would have been extremely surprised if it wasnt. This is normal for China, the CCP is eavesdropping on everything

  source
• reflex@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Jeremy Clarkson: "The Chinese are very good at this sort of thing."

  source
• CoolBeance@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I feel like there should be a Lemmy version of everything now

  source
• Milk_SDF_Possum@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  “Notice the lack of surprise.”

  source
• lasagna@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Tencent began investing on Reddit several years back.

  source
• BoostWillis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Naomi Wu has literally been talking about pwnd Chinese IMEs for years in her sidechannel critiques of Signal.

  source
• 3arn0wl@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The most popular Western OS (and probably the other commercial OSs too) sends every key typed back to base. Plus every website visited. Plus every document amended.

  source
• critical@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Same with Microsoft keyboard and almost every other keyboard app.

  source
• crisq@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  In fact it’s hard to find open source Chinese input methods that work well enough, the only ones I know of are Trime and Fcitx5_for_android.

  source
• 3arn0wl@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  howtogeek.com/…/how-to-see-what-data-windows-10-i…

  source
• masterairmagic@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I’m willing to bet that Google keyboards do the same.

  source
• schnokobaer@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Joke’s on them I don’t tap I swipe

  source
• Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Just gonna plug FlorisBoard here. A bit barebones for now but at least it respects your privacy.

  source