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WARNING This device is produced by TCL that has a long sordid history of selling phones with pre-installed malware, modifying pre-installed system apps to push

WARNING This device is produced by TCL that has a long sordid history of selling phones with pre-installed malware, modifying pre-installed system apps to push ads after firmware “upgrades” and customized social media apps that share low-level user data with the Chinese manufacturer and reports of TCL devices performing DNS rebinding attacks to access internal networks. For more information visit XDA developers under “Joy launcher, no joy”

api 6y ago
The entire mobile ecosystem is about spying, with any features these devices provide being secondary to their primary function of gathering information on their users. Of the mobile platforms, Apple seems the least like this. They seem to actually care about user privacy to some extent, but that's also because they are the most expensive and therefore have revenue more closely tied to their users as actual customers. I still wouldn't let Apple totally off the hook though. They still gather telemetry, and apps on iOS spy as much as they can possibly get away with. Virtually any mobile app is loaded with as much spyware as can possibly be packaged with it and tuned to gather maximum data without being too annoying or visible to the user. It would be really hard to change this as long as there is such a market for user data. It's too tempting to load apps (or the whole phone) with spyware and cash in. Add to this the fact that governments around the world are certainly in the game both financially and covertly. The only way to really have a privacy-first mobile device would be to lock it the hell down and not allow apps to do anything without explicit user interaction... especially location awareness or any kind of sensor or camera/microphone use. Even with a really locked down phone apps would still try to find clever ways to gather data, and there's a lot of exploitable surface area. The only other way to fix it would be legislation. One way would be to legislate HIPAA-like protections for intimate user data such as passive audio recordings or location information. Leak a users' location info or sell it without their permission? That will be $10,000 per violation, where a violation is a single location data point for a single user. This would instantly convert user telemetry data hoards from assets to liabilities. Of course what would probably happen is all this stuff would just move off-shore and into shell companies that can't effectively be fined or sued. Legislation might not even work and might make the industry even shadier than it already is. There's too much incentive to spy.
- theshrike79 6y ago
  Apple is a hardware company, they don't earn a cent knowing who you are. This is why they can lean hard on the privacy aspect, Google (an ad company) can never follow them there all the way.
  - russdpale 6y ago
    But the app store allows that apps that collect all sorts of data on you, and doesn't apple get a cut of the sales from apps? Just because its a few steps transient doesn't mean apple has clean hands here.
    - miskin 6y ago
      True, but arguably they are making spying harder with each ios release. If profiling and ads were their bread and butter, they would act differently.
      - retpirato 6y ago
        It may not be their "bread and butter", but that doesn't mean they don't do it. Every time I see somebody talking about Google spying on users but 'X' company doesn't do it, I start to think there just a fanboy to Apple or whatever the company in question is. You should just assume EVERYBODY is spying. Just because it isn't their primary source of revenue, doesn't mean it isn't a source of revenue at all or isn't of value to them.
        theshrike79 6y ago
        There are levels of "spying". There is "enable microphone, listen in on conversations and adjust ad preferences" and "upload all photos in the background for analysis" and "check the clipboard for interesting stuff every few seconds" Then there is just normal telemetry, anonymised and used for internal product development.
    - ricardobeat 6y ago

api 6y ago

The entire mobile ecosystem is about spying, with any features these devices provide being secondary to their primary function of gathering information on their users. Of the mobile platforms, Apple seems the least like this. They seem to actually care about user privacy to some extent, but that's also because they are the most expensive and therefore have revenue more closely tied to their users as actual customers. I still wouldn't let Apple totally off the hook though. They still gather telemetry, and apps on iOS spy as much as they can possibly get away with. Virtually any mobile app is loaded with as much spyware as can possibly be packaged with it and tuned to gather maximum data without being too annoying or visible to the user. It would be really hard to change this as long as there is such a market for user data. It's too tempting to load apps (or the whole phone) with spyware and cash in. Add to this the fact that governments around the world are certainly in the game both financially and covertly. The only way to really have a privacy-first mobile device would be to lock it the hell down and not allow apps to do anything without explicit user interaction... especially location awareness or any kind of sensor or camera/microphone use. Even with a really locked down phone apps would still try to find clever ways to gather data, and there's a lot of exploitable surface area. The only other way to fix it would be legislation. One way would be to legislate HIPAA-like protections for intimate user data such as passive audio recordings or location information. Leak a users' location info or sell it without their permission? That will be $10,000 per violation, where a violation is a single location data point for a single user. This would instantly convert user telemetry data hoards from assets to liabilities. Of course what would probably happen is all this stuff would just move off-shore and into shell companies that can't effectively be fined or sued. Legislation might not even work and might make the industry even shadier than it already is. There's too much incentive to spy.

theshrike79 6y ago
Apple is a hardware company, they don't earn a cent knowing who you are. This is why they can lean hard on the privacy aspect, Google (an ad company) can never follow them there all the way.
- russdpale 6y ago
  But the app store allows that apps that collect all sorts of data on you, and doesn't apple get a cut of the sales from apps? Just because its a few steps transient doesn't mean apple has clean hands here.
  - miskin 6y ago
    True, but arguably they are making spying harder with each ios release. If profiling and ads were their bread and butter, they would act differently.
    - retpirato 6y ago
      It may not be their "bread and butter", but that doesn't mean they don't do it. Every time I see somebody talking about Google spying on users but 'X' company doesn't do it, I start to think there just a fanboy to Apple or whatever the company in question is. You should just assume EVERYBODY is spying. Just because it isn't their primary source of revenue, doesn't mean it isn't a source of revenue at all or isn't of value to them.
      - theshrike79 6y ago
        There are levels of "spying". There is "enable microphone, listen in on conversations and adjust ad preferences" and "upload all photos in the background for analysis" and "check the clipboard for interesting stuff every few seconds" Then there is just normal telemetry, anonymised and used for internal product development.
  - ricardobeat 6y ago