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If you use a Chinese phone, they still know where you are.
And if it's one with a Snapdragon CPU, the NSA probably knows too. And while China is rather authoritarian, and I'd be worried if I lived there, currently I'm more worried about surveillance by a government that has more influence on the country I live in, and likely shares data with my countries intelligence services.
Which of course doesn't mean I like the thought they might be doing mass surveillance of people.
Yeah this is exactly how I feel. Like sure I don't want China to spy on me but I don't plan to go to China so it doesn't really matter. What matters more is the USA spying on me cause I live there and that could mean actual consequences if people like Trump get in power and try to go after people that don't agree with them.
I think CPU backdoors are just a theoratically possible thing with almost zero chance of happening or succeeding without anyone noticing or having massive consequences and would bring massive changes to the industry like open source makers sprouting up (because it would open up a market where the open aourc chips could be profitable) because if snapdragon really could do that i don't think china will make phones with them . Also its not worth it because everything you could ever want could be scooped from users os/apps/sites and is far much easy/profitable/easier to get out scot free etc . Anyways i could be wrong about everything so take it with a grain of salt and feel free to correct me .
I'm not talking about the CPU itself. If I remember correctly, phones with Snapdragon CPUs usually have packages from qualcomm installed, and there have been reports about them sending data to qualcomm.
Welp this article is kinda trouble some as
1 They do not say what they caught qualcomm with for no reason.
2 They have a header called sony and fairphone are affected and many more and continues to say thay until the end when they reveal they didn't even test fairphone and just assumed it must be because they use qualcom chips too .
3 Why throw so much shade at fairphone like there are much more popular devices such as samsung and shit ? They also at the end boasts about their phone not using qualcomm and being more secure .
4 We don't even know if that proprietry blob by qualcomm could be disabled or deleted and they didn't even try it on better roms like graphene or anything and they should've tried if an android firewall could block it .
All in all nice article and i never trusted Qualcomm or any other hardware vendors who all hide behind proprietary hardwares anyway and no one should as they all will stab you in the back as soon as it is feasible i'm sure . I just don't think hardware/cpu backdoor is tge way and had hope for qualcomm as they seemed to invest in RISC V a while back which nothing came of anyway . All in all fuck Qualcomm and everyone else .
Again i could be wrong about everything so take it with a grain of salt and feel free to correct me .
They seem to point at the qualcomm privacy policy to show what's being collected. It does seem strange that they're not analysing the packets themselves, especially since they're claiming the data is unencrypted. The article is quite sensationalist, probably to help sell their very expensive (one might dare saying overpriced) Pixels with preinstalled Graphene.
It's still good to keep in mind that qualcomm seems to be collecting personalised data, which they'd likely hand over to US intelligence or law enforcement if requested to, and that at least some custom roms come with the proprietary packages that facilitate this.
Why should this even matter? Every android has a proprietary parts of code that need to be included even in custom roms. In case of ios devices, the entire OS is proprietary. I would much rather use a Chinese android phone with an unlocked bootloader than an american iphone.
a Chinese android phone with an unlocked bootloader
Unlocked bootloader doesn't automatically lead to good community ROM support, though.
You still need to trust the manufacturer
Also the drivers and hardware can be backdoored
A lot of Chinese phones use Snapdragon, so you can rest easy knowing Chinese companies don't have access to your location or some other bullshit
Meanwhile NSA has their hands so far up your ass you need a guest appearance on The Muppets
This entire "technological sinophobia" is nothing but the evolution of yellow peril racism
Hey, look at this guy! He thinks Qualcomm gives a shit about his privacy!
Both American and Chinese phones use Snapdragon chips. If the American government is spying on you, despite your phone having said Snapdragon, what makes you think the Chinese government isn’t also spying?
Your whataboutism is slightly concerning, it’s not like China is also home to Hauwei or anything..
They are all the same, all spying in you. The only difference between them is who's doing the spying and to what degree.
Jokes on you, I use a Windows Fone. /s