The Apple and Google app stores continue to offer private browsing apps that are surreptitiously owned by Chinese companies, more than six weeks after they were identified in a Tech Transparency Project report. Apple and Google may also be profiting from these apps, which put Americans’ privacy and U.S. national security at risk, TTP found.
The apps are virtual private networks (VPNs), which promise to mask a user’s identity as they browse the internet. But Chinese-owned VPNs raise serious privacy and security concerns for Americans because Chinese companies can be forced to share user data with the Chinese government under the country’s national security laws. VPNs have access to particularly sensitive user data since they see all of a person’s web activity.
Who cares if China has your data?
If you give your data to America, you’re definitely going into the Palantir AI tech so you can get drone striked in your bedroom for not jerking off to your Donald Trump pic for the correct number of strokes.
How are the Chinese data hoarders providing government your information to the government any worse than the US ones doing the same? VPNs are only a small part of the full arsenal needed for obfuscating your identity, and the nationality of any of them is irrelevant, as pretty much all governments are gathering data from them.
I don’t trust Chinese VPNs, and I don’t trust American VPNs, or Russian, or Israeli. I feel somewhat safer with Mullvad or Proton VPNs, and even then, they are worthless if you’re relying only on VPNs.
Yes I do
No.
As someone living in Europe I’m more concerned with American companies harvesting my data.
Just curious: Why would you prefer your data to be harvested in China vs. the US?
Edit: I’m also genuinely curious about why this question is getting downvoted. Is it offensive or something? I meant no harm to anyone.
thats not what they said did they? they said they are more concerned about American companies harvesting their data as they live in Europe and don’t have as much affinity to China.
thats not what they said did they?
Is it not? They said they’re “more concerned” with American companies harvesting data. Doesn’t that mean that, given the choice between the US and China harvesting their data, they’d choose China because it concerns them less? Did I misunderstand it?
they said they are more concerned about American companies harvesting their data as they live in Europe and don’t have as much affinity to China.
Actually, they didn’t say this part:
and don’t have as much affinity to China.
They answered my question with a more specific explanation though, and now I understand. In their position, I’d probably choose China too.
Sure yeah I could be wrong. If America scares them more than China it’s a major turning point because they are European.
What I initially got from their comment: They are more concerned about actually real threats in their life like Google, Meta, or Apple which are American and are probably what they are using at work and outside of work given they live in Europe. They are less concerned about china because they don’t use chinese phones daily or hangout in weChat (I hope).
Where I can of course be wrong about this: They are actually using Tiktok and don’t care about the possible spying. They could be using chinese tech and simply not know. main concern is if they are on some tech stack at work or their ISP has equipment from chinese companies known to phone home.
Because the US is worse in every quantifiable way
Because China doesn’t have as much influence in Europe as the US does. Besides that, there’s a higher chance of US companies sharing data with European governments than Chinese companies doing so.
Ah, thanks for the explanation. That totally makes sense. If forced to choose a foreign entity to harvest my data, I’d prefer the one least likely to share my data with my government too.
Don’t use sketchy VPN apps, at all. The fact that they’re Chinese owned is irrelevant.
Honestly, I wouldn’t trust most commercial VPNs these days, especially the ones that are nearly always on 100% discount sales. If they’re not making their revenue from customers, they must be making it some other way. And that’s a mighty fine data set they’re sitting on.
Eh, I think it’s simple, they want people to sign up for free, and then forget about the subscription once it starts charging. I don’t think selling data is the priority here, but maybe they do that too.
Do you trust the NSA, ICANN, IANA (all headquartered in the USA) etc and that SSL/TLS cert authorities haven’t been backdoored to hell and back? (Probably a decade+ since top level cert authorities were found to be backdoored but who cares amirite.)
Oh no, China is stealing your data! Wait, America is also stealing your data and you don’t care? Hmm.
Removed by mod
About as much as I trust the yanks.
So, trust your VPN service. Makes sense.
it can’t be worse that what DOGE has done.
Sincerely, what is China going to do with it? Open a Chinese bank account in my name? If any institution in the us accepts account openings from a chinese or vpn ip address then it cant be trustworthy enough to ever affect me.
Same as American companies. Send you targeted ads and news articles to influence your world view as a form of new soft power.
you can move onto proxies, or even host your own, but thats going to cost money.(yea thats what the of ACCOUNTS, AND LINK FARMING accts use on reddit these days). VPn is way to compromised and abused already.
What’s China going to do with your data? Far less than your own country can.
If the choice is between China and your own country, China every day.
That is until they have enough data to be able to sabotage a major part of your country’s infrastructure and use it as a bargaining chip to exploit your country, then it won’t be less damage. Its just theoretical, but we know that’s one of the reason any country collect data from another country’s citizens.
Just weigh the risks every time instead of defaulting to a position of China all the time.
China hasn’t revealed itself to be Cthulhu, unlike the US or Russia. So for me yes, it’s China at every turn unless a local option exists.
What does that even mean?
It means I trust China more than the US.
I don’t see a problem here. Capitalism has already done this. At least they have competition.
My problem is his general conclusion to always prefer China. Making predetermined decision without considering the situation you’re in is kinda stupid.
But that’s not the choice
You don’t think it is, but yeah it pretty much is. The only VPN company I know of who has proven in court that they don’t keep logs is PIA.
So choose PIA lol
I have been using PIA for the last like 10 years :)
The point was that you’re not going to have the CCP come knocking on your door to arrest you unless you live in china, whereas your own country’s government could.
