this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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Privacy

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Privacy Advice Rendered on lemmy.ml: Get Xiaomi phone to degoogle (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 month ago by sunzu2@thebrainbin.org to c/privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Of the largest android sellers, only samsung requires gplay. Xiaomi, vivo, oppo, realme, honor, are all chinese companies that require non-bundled google play for their domestic (and maybe other countries?) releases. Google can't alienate these sellers, and if they did, all of these companies would create their own AOSP fork (or just switch to HarmonyOS)

I recently bought a xiaomi android tablet that doesn't have google play services luckily.

Comrade dessalines, shilling chinese corpo slop instead of the standard open-source solutions.

Not very revolutionary!

While technically true, this feels malicious.

Let me swap the pedo king for shepooh!

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[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 17 points 1 month ago (3 children)

To paraphrase from the reaction post about the "what's going with all the China and Russia love lately?" .... Apparently all the .ML instances are so full on anti-Western that they think China, being simply not America, is the "Good Guys." There's a general loss of ability to understand that maybe everyone is shit.

China is understood to have hardware level access to devices, even if you installed Lineage OS, meaning a rootkit is an SMS away even if you're just in it for the hardware.

I might be downvoted for saying the very obvious: this is either naive AF (my guess) or malicious. Most likely just naive and stupid.

[–] stm@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

China is understood to have hardware level access to devices, even if you installed Lineage OS, meaning a rootkit is an SMS away even if you’re just in it for the hardware.

you are saying this as US corpos don't have access to devices

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Famously not always. Apple has proved numerous times they have no access to iphones once the user encrypts them. It's also an added expense and increased attack surface anyway, at the hardware level which is constantly changing, so if there's no legal requirement to do it, why bother? No one gets a prize from the FBI for doing that, and its costs money and time and there would be designers at every individual company who would be able to point directly to the back door. There's no incentive - and there's no evidence of it ever happening. No criminal case has ever shown someone using with Lineage or Graphine on an Adroid phone had their phone hacked by any government for the sole purpose of accessing data on an individual.

Meanwhile, in China, it's a legal requirement from the government that hardware level backdoors exist.

It's kind of a moot point though - at this point commercially available spyware can get in at the software level. It's more so a question of if you think you'll be a target, and targeted by whom? The only 100% sure thing through is that the CCP does have access, with any OS, to any device made and sold by a Chinese company.

[–] stm@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

Well, snowden files showed that big tech corpos need to provide access to gvt for all data, there is a graph when each big tech company provided it. Looking at that I conclude simillar thing for hardware is happening, it's not in law as in china, but it exists, we just need some new snowden type event to happen.

No one gets a prize from the FBI for doing that, and its costs money and time and there would be designers at every individual company who would be able to point directly to the back door.

Prize doesn't matter, if the state wants something from a company they wiil get it. It's just not made public.

No criminal case has ever shown someone using with Lineage or Graphine on an Adroid phone had their phone hacked by any government for the sole purpose of accessing data on an individual.

And if lineage is on xiaomi, or redmi then chinese state also has access or not ?

It’s kind of a moot point though - at this point commercially available spyware can get in at the software level.

I agree on that, imo threat modeling is most important and custom ROM have their own place and are not always needed. My point is that US either state or companies is not better than China ones, they just have better marketing in many ways and also there is lot's of propaganda aginst China or anyone US considers threat in some way. Which creates illusion that US or EU or the west is better than China.

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 1 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

And if lineage is on xiaomi, or redmi then chinese state also has access or not ?

Yeah, the Chinese law demands hardware level backdoors. So flashing a new ROM doesn't change anything other than making you more suspicious-looking probably. In Western countries that's not an explicit demand, and Apple has shown more times than not that such a thing doesn't exist as a blanket requirement.

But it's all private companies, and maybe the signals three-letter agency has their own resources, that get into this because it's profitable. Cellebrite exists not because a government (directly) created it, but because forensics investigation companies are a thing. One of the best tricks of the 20th century is relying on contractors to do the dirty work, because they're disposable and a government can, if they want, classify their work as secret and make themselves the only customer. When the company messes up, they're booted and all the researchers get new jobs. Typically this doesn't ever mean real secrets remain secret (unless you're a UFO conspiracy person) more than a few years, and both FOIA requests and court cases reveal the info occasionally.

Case in point - the fact that data brokers and third party doctrine allow for invasive surveillance we all "consented" to by having devices in the first place. All the proxy means work just fine, and are cheaper, easier, and more adaptable to dynamic environments. All that PRISM stuff is so out of date. it's quaint at this point.

So a lack of evidence is not evidence of the inverse. You just need to not think that everything is a monolith to understand how it fits together.

[–] stm@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

And Apple was in prism since at least 2013. And if PRISM is outdated that only means "better" ones are in use. You sound to defend apple a lot.

My point is US hardware and companies are just as bad as Chinese ones. If it's officially mandated in China that show that China is just more transparent in surveliance than the US is.

I'd still use Xiaomi rather than Apple any day now if they are my only choices. I see Apple is shilled by lot's of people in privacy circles. Find it a bit sad.

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 3 points 3 weeks ago

You're entitled to your opinion, but I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues here.

Chinese hardware level backdoors are vulnerabilities to be exploited anywhere you are on earth, and you ONLY have that issue alone if you flash a new ROM. Stock Xiaomi's OS MUI is definitely more riddled with CVEs that make it far less secure if you use the regular OS. Apple's security only relies on their proprietary lockdown of everything, which means no privacy guaranteed other than data encrypted at rest. They're both very bad options. Arguing about which is super bad terrible and only very bad terrible doesn't prevent you from choosing a bad option.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

The broken clock should be right twice a day tho...

If it ain't that's a statistical anomaly. Kinda like they sort out that Japan sumo was rigged.

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

How do you mean?

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 1 points 3 weeks ago

So a lack of evidence is not evidence of the inverse.

This statement is true but within context of information asymmetry this is the best we gonna get it.

People who do the crime control the evidence, we are unlikely to be privy to the evidence. Hence why we have to rely on circumstantial evidence or patterns to create working theories.

With japan sumo wrestler case, statistical analysis exposed them for fixing matches.

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 1 points 3 weeks ago

How do you mean?

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah my understanding that the proprietary firmware blobs in SoCs like Qualcomm etc do have them.

I am assuming Chinese would have the same but a lot of their phones have Qualcomm too so I am not sure how Chinese would do that if they are using westoid SoC

[–] stm@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yeah my understanding that the proprietary firmware blobs in SoCs like Qualcomm etc do have them.

I'm assuming hardware backdoor, or backdoor in general rabbit hole goes really deep, but I'm not tech literate enough to process it, so I just assume everything is backdoored in some way

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sir I am regarded

But I never seen any good tinfoil on the hardware level, wouldn't it need physical acceess?

[–] stm@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago

But I never seen any good tinfoil on the hardware level, wouldn’t it need physical acceess?

I guess it depends. Intel ME doesn't need hardware access, it's a backdoor in the open.

[–] Trihilis@ani.social 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Its because lots of people lack critical thinking skill nowadays. They just go on whatever social media fits their narrative and parrot everything they read.

Doesn't matter to them if its "right or wrong", it fits their narrative so they will stick with it regardless. Its about not accepting any truth except the one you created for yourself.

I have my opinions about certain political systems, but I feel it doesn't really matter what kind of political system you use if the people at the top pulling the strings are corrupt and malicious.

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 1 points 1 month ago

Of course, easy to see how anyone stuck in an echo chamber gets to where they are on any belief. I'm not blaming anyone, just explaining how a sizable group of folks from a specific instance might end up so confidently incorrect.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

China is understood to have hardware level access to devices, even if you installed Lineage OS, meaning a rootkit is an SMS away even if you're just in it for the hardware.

Is there any confirmation for this?

I mean I do operate under this assumption but I don't think it was ever confirmed.

i

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 4 points 1 month ago

I think it's sort of confirmed as conceptually possible. But that was also 10 years ago, and they're also in telco infrastructure, so they likely don't need more than a typical spyware no-click entry point.

Personally, I would never bother. It's not like the trade off is better equipment.