MikeB4:

 

Why do folks say that Huawei is an arm of the Chinese government? 

 

Because it is.   China is a communist country. 

"a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community"

The community is represented by a non-elected government. In other words, the government owns every business and all land / buildings in China. 

eg, the chinese government recently seized the Anbang insurance company. Every chinese company has a government oversight department. 

noroad:

 

MikeB4:

 

Huawei is owned by the staff of Huawei

 

 

The validity of that statement is dubious at very best (can an employee sell their "shares", does an ex-employee retain and have the right to sell these "shares", the answer is no to both).

 

Here's an interesting note on that point, "western" employees are not granted access to this theoretical ownership (I almost took a job there many years ago and this point (among others) had all the alarm bells ringing).

 

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/technology/who-owns-huawei.html 

 

http://telecoms.com/496951/new-research-claims-employees-do-not-own-huawei/

 

 

 

My wife was vested in Huawei shares when an employee

surfisup1000:

 

MikeB4:

 

Why do folks say that Huawei is an arm of the Chinese government? 

 

 

Because it is.   China is a communist country. 

 

"a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community"

 

The community is represented by a non-elected government. In other words, the government owns every business and all land / buildings in China. 

 

eg, the chinese government recently seized the Anbang insurance company. Every chinese company has a government oversight department. 

 

 

 

That is a very simplistic view which I believe is based mainly on propaganda. 

Note I am not vested in Huawei at all.

I am not employed by Huawei.

I do not buy Huawei products.

I do not particularly like Huawei for numerous reasons. 

MikeB4:

 

My wife was vested in Huawei shares when an employee

 

The thing is, those shares could be nullified at anytime at the whim of the chinese government. Completely legally and above board.  

It would be better to think of those shares as a temporary 'license' rather than actual ownership. 

MikeB4:

 

 

 

My wife was vested in Huawei shares when an employee

 

Did she get any gain out of these shares when she left? (I assume that you are saying she no longer works for the company) Or was it like a leaving bonus or superannuation payout?

MikeB4:

 

That is a very simplistic view which I believe is based mainly on propaganda. 

 

Note I am not vested in Huawei at all.

 

I am not employed by Huawei.

 

I do not buy Huawei products.

 

I do not particularly like Huawei for numerous reasons. 

 

But your wife was employed by them and had shares with them , so you likely have some bias. 

The chinese government confiscated Anbang!  That is not propaganda, rather a fact. And, not the only company either. 

I think you just don't understand communism. 

Name a communist government that has treated their citizens well.  Socialism simply does not work, because greed corrupts every single person who gets into power .

Are you saying that human rights and property right abuses in china are merely propaganda? 

Would you prefer a socialist or democratic government? Under socialism, you can kiss your human rights goodbye. Ask the Venezuelans. 

surfisup1000:

 

But your wife was employed by them and had shares with them , so you likely have some bias. 

 

These "restricted phantom shares" as they call them can not be retained or sold and have no voting rights, so they are not shares they are a smoke screen. At best (assuming the ex-employee gets paid something when they leave the company) its a company forced savings scheme. The fact that westerners are not eligible makes it even more suspect.

Back on topic... @TeaLeaf asked "Can we trust other asian phones..." and I argued that every other phone would be doing something with your personal data - and you wouldn't even know it. So here is an article from today's Washington Post "It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to?"

 

On a recent Monday night, a dozen marketing companies, research firms and other personal data guzzlers got reports from my iPhone. At 11:43 p.m., a company called Amplitude learned my phone number, email and exact location. At 3:58 a.m., another called Appboy got a digital fingerprint of my phone. At 6:25 a.m., a tracker called Demdex received a way to identify my phone and sent back a list of other trackers to pair up with.

 

And all night long, there was some startling behavior by a household name: Yelp. It was receiving a message that included my IP address -— once every five minutes.

 

You might assume you can count on Apple to sweat all the privacy details. After all, it touted in a recent ad, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.” My investigation suggests otherwise.

 

IPhone apps I discovered tracking me by passing information to third parties — just while I was asleep — include Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit’s Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post and IBM’s the Weather Channel. One app, the crime-alert service Citizen, shared personally identifiable information in violation of its published privacy policy.

 

And your iPhone doesn’t only feed data trackers while you sleep. In a single week, I encountered over 5,400 trackers, mostly in apps, not including the incessant Yelp traffic.

 

Jackson’s biggest concern is transparency: If we don’t know where our data is going, how can we ever hope to keep it private?

 

A more typical example is DoorDash, the food-delivery service. Launch that app, and you’re sending data to nine third-party trackers — though you’d have no way to know it.

 

In the case of DoorDash, one tracker called Sift Science gets a fingerprint of your phone (device name, model, ad identifier and memory size) and even accelerometer motion data to help identify fraud. Three more trackers help DoorDash monitor app performance — including one called Segment that routes onward data including your delivery address, name, email and cell carrier.

 

Privacy policies don’t necessarily provide protection. Citizen, the app for location-based crime reports, published that it wouldn’t share “your name or other personally identifying information.” Yet when I ran my test, I found it repeatedly sent my phone number, email and exact GPS coordinates to the tracker Amplitude.

 

After I contacted Citizen, it updated its app and removed the Amplitude tracker. (Amplitude, for its part, says data it collects for clients is kept private and not sold.)

 

 

 

That is pretty scary. 👿

We agree and I do not have to be a super cynical to think that there is embedded code in the SOC of my cheap China cell phone that can work to my disadvantage.  Seen as spontaneously installed apps generating advertising possibly targeted with the help of mined data.  

I recently installed a security camera app.  It is astonishingly busy even when forced stopped attempting to connect to internet ip's.  I hope to use the camera by allowing only a pipe into my router that I can have mac exclusive access to.  This is going to be too hard for me.

@GGJohnstone:

 

I recently installed a security camera app.  It is astonishingly busy even when forced stopped attempting to connect to internet ip's.  I hope to use the camera by allowing only a pipe into my router that I can have mac exclusive access to.  This is going to be too hard for me.

 

Don't. Cheap Chinese IP cameras and port forwards are just another example of crap waiting to be exploited. Just read this saga...

freitasm:

 

On a recent Monday night, a dozen marketing companies, research firms and other personal data guzzlers got reports from my iPhone. At 11:43 p.m., a company called Amplitude learned my phone number, email and exact location. At 3:58 a.m., another called Appboy got a digital fingerprint of my phone. At 6:25 a.m., a tracker called Demdex received a way to identify my phone and sent back a list of other trackers to pair up with.

 

In my view the biggest issue with the connected world , is personal privacy.   I tell my kids never to post anything that you wouldn't be happy for anyone to read. Every snapchat, instagram, facebook post, could come back to hurt them in the future. 

Companies lie about personal data and security all the time. There have been huge security breaches of personal data in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. 

Phones now have sensors to collect vast amounts of data. Apps can grab that data and link it with personal data. 

Personal privacy is something hard to come by.   I google my name, and I can find something from back in 2005 and that is about it.  I like to keep it that way too. 

Dial111: Is it the phone itself though? That article header seems misleading as it implies it is the iPhone that is the culprit when in fact it’s the apps being installed which in turn is the permissions it uses to function.

Yes, quite right. But, the phone technology enables this, but many people do not know. 

Dial111: Is it the phone itself though? That article header seems misleading as it implies it is the iPhone that is the culprit when in fact it’s the apps being installed which in turn is the permissions it uses to function.

Asking "Can we trust other asian (sic) phones" without considering that the phone is just one piece of the puzzle and yourself may be a bigger risk by installing anything and everything. If it s not this phone or that phone (although some very cheap crap may have been compromised in the production from the start) but even more what you do with it. Buying an iPhone because "Apple values my privacy" doesn't cut it.