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Google and Apple app store pages say no personal data is collected or sent to 3rd parties. "It turns out it's sending GPS, cell phone tower cell

Google and Apple app store pages say no personal data is collected or sent to 3rd parties. "It turns out it's sending GPS, cell phone tower cell IDs and Wifi beacon data to servers in Hong Kong and mainland China on a continued basis" It seems to me that app store providers should drop the "no personal data collected or sent to 3rd parties" language entirely. Instead, the warning should be: "this app has permissions to do network stuff and can potentially send whatever the f-- it wants to whomever it wants" or "the app maker claims it won't give data to 3rd parties but we have absolutely zero way of verifying this." Because the reality is that neither Apple nor Google can have any idea what a "3rd party" is. Those servers in China and HK may well be 1st party. Who knows? Who can know? Nobody but the app maker.

toss1 3y ago
Exactly! More importantly, simply expect that if you are touching any digital/electronic technology that touches China, you should expect that they are extracting and collecting every bit of available personal, location, and other data, and that it is available to the CCP. And, while the CCP likely does not GAF about your particular data, they do care a LOT about the aggregate data. They also will find it very handy when in intersects for particular targets, such as any of the millions of US govt employees whose data they harvested over years [0][1]. The Great Experiment, in which it was thought that open commerce and exchange would lead to democracy and freedom for China's millions, has failed, resoundingly. All it did was further empower a ruthless dictatorship bent on global expansionism. Do not do business with China. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management... [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/china-spent-years-collecting-americans-personal-information-u-s-just-n1134411 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/china-spent-years-coll...
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  Amen. The insights that can be gleaned from even innocuous-seeming data at scale are impressive and terrifying.

toss1 3y ago

Exactly! More importantly, simply expect that if you are touching any digital/electronic technology that touches China, you should expect that they are extracting and collecting every bit of available personal, location, and other data, and that it is available to the CCP. And, while the CCP likely does not GAF about your particular data, they do care a LOT about the aggregate data. They also will find it very handy when in intersects for particular targets, such as any of the millions of US govt employees whose data they harvested over years [0][1]. The Great Experiment, in which it was thought that open commerce and exchange would lead to democracy and freedom for China's millions, has failed, resoundingly. All it did was further empower a ruthless dictatorship bent on global expansionism. Do not do business with China. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management... [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/china-spent-years-collecting-americans-personal-information-u-s-just-n1134411 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/china-spent-years-coll...

JohnBooty 3y ago
Amen. The insights that can be gleaned from even innocuous-seeming data at scale are impressive and terrifying.