Do you trust Xi with your 'private' browsing data? Apple, Google stores still offer China-based VPNs, report says

Both Apple's and Google's online stores offer free virtual private network (VPN) apps owned by Chinese companies, according to researchers at the Tech Transparency Project, and they don't make this fact readily known to people downloading the apps. Neither company requires all app developers in their respective stores to …

[VoiceOfTruth]

China hit piece, nothing more

If Tech Transparency Project is so bothered about people being spied upon when they use VPNs, let's hear from them about USA based VPNs. Why am I supposed to trust American or American-owned VPNs? The USA does not represent the world. With its tariffs it is not on 'our' side. A big F U to the USA.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: China hit piece, nothing more

The only VPN I trust is the one I run myself. And even then I don't fully trust my ISP.

[llaryllama]

Re: China hit piece, nothing more

What most China apologists and whataboutists fail to understand (or choose to ignore) is there is no such thing as a truly private Chinese enterprise.

Sure, pretty much every government in the world has some kind of data tapping law and is able to subpoena the likes of Google for customer data.

The big difference is that an American company is allowed to publicly challenge government overreach and in fact here we are openly discussing this issue with different viewpoints.

Chinese people and businesses have no choice in the matter. Saying that doesn't affect Joe Shmo so we shouldn't worry about it ignores the plight of millions who are detained, tortured or executed for rather silly and petty ideological reasons.

China does not allow free access to data, discussion or thought and for most people VPNs are the only way to tunnel out of that information black hole. I feel very strongly about this issue and get rather annoyed at glib responses like "America is just as bad or worse at x" when a) that is not the problem being discussed and b) no, they really aren't.

[Inkey]

Re: China hit piece, nothing more

'"What most China apologists and whataboutists fail to understand "

And what you fail to mention is the atrocities that western nations have perpetuated and continue to do so, except with a more polished and pro nationalist retoric or spin of the day... presumably you feel strongly about that as well.

China has not had a war of scale since the 1930s

Some clashes and battles in the 70's around the vietnam era and show of force in napal in 2020...

The us has had a "war" on somthing or with some group or nation pretty much for most of modern times, often just as a guise to increase their imperialist agenda's. Straight of the bat as the republic came to be, the us had not 1 but 2 wars with china to keep hundreds of thousends of chinese people junked up opium fiends. That thay are a "communist" counry is more to do with the crazy bitch mau's wife who wanted revenge for not being a movie star ... it's now more like a sign of commonality with the neighboirs... like a gang tatto you got in a rough hood growing up, its there for ever but you cover it up with a shirt bought from levies

The us is bearly 250 years old as a mostly white european country ... when sen john keery says he can trace his linage back to roman times it must make some chinese people smirk when they can trace ancestry back past 2 dynasties and have 6000 year old calanders. China historicaly never really wanted anything to do withw the west, but european traders had a nibble of the spice road and wanted more... pasta well noodles really ... gunpowder, silk oh and drugs... class a by todays classification.

The whataboitism is not about VPN'S, it's about hypocrisy, and attempting to decern the truth from the miase of how "news" and facts(sic) are represented depending on your geographcal location. Western media is owned by very few people. Mega corpperations like google, apple and the rest have been sucking on china and will continue to while its profitable, because the short term gains of off shoring and cheap labour are worth more than your countries middle class. And if you think some failed game show host / realator is going to dictate how china and japan do commerce you are deluded ... tiawan is 180 km from china and have been trading for centuries who's middle class has grown roughly 4% year on year for the last 2 years.

Whats wierd for me is that the VPN's get a pro us artical in a us owned media outlet .. but no one gives a shit about the routers, switches and other consumer tat thats made in asia. ...harley davidson aparel... yep made in china... my feelin is that xi is just keeping an eye out on the 860bn trade dedicit, not reallly to call a marker but to see if mabe the usa is no longer a profitable entity and if africa might be ripe enough.

What the west is waking up to is the fact that china were not playing a long game they are the long game,

Apologies about the length ... no way i could frame it all in a witty ancedote, let the down votes begin

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: China hit piece, nothing more

The three million chinese soldier that avoided North Corea collapse in the Korean War were there for a picnic? The invasion of Tibet? And Vietnam was the classic proxy war - Vietnamese were sacrificed for Russian and Chinese interests....

But it's true US saved China butts in the 1930-1940s when they were invaded by Japnaese.

It's better you use sources NOT APPROVED by mr. Xi....

[Casca]

Re: China hit piece, nothing more

Thank you for proving his point about China apologists and whataboutists

[llaryllama]

Re: China hit piece, nothing more

I am Taiwanese and came here to discuss an article about China because it happens to be an issue that's very close to me. It's very frustrating that any discussion whatsoever about what China is doing wrong or could do better immediately descends into whiny rants about America or the West in general.

The argument that China does not get involved in hot wars is rather tiring when you understand that China are masters of grey warfare and proxy tactics. China would never directly attack an enemy unless they are all but guaranteed a win. With the rate that the PLC is increasing military budgets and general regional belligerence I wonder how much longer it will take until anti-Western armchair commentators stop parroting the "peaceful China" line pushed by China Daily.

America does not have thousands of missiles pointed in my general direction, nor have they ever threatened to bomb my country or throw our citizens in prison for having fairly mild political opinions. Given a binary choice between America and China as world police I think America is clearly the safer option. But like I said, that's neither what the article was about or what I came here to comment on.

[Grogan]

At this point I trust the Chinese more than the Americans... and companies like Google and meta faecesbook. China doesn't give a fuck what I do. America, on the other hand, likes to probe everyone's anus. Right now I distrust any American company, because Donald and his ilk exert control over them.

[DS999]

Why should Apple/Google pull them?

Just because they are (supposedly) linked to China's government? So what if organization A objects to a VPN that's linked to Israel, organization B to Russia, organization C to the US... There will be nothing everyone trusts, so they should just delete them all right?

Now if the *US government* said "we do not trust the following VPN apps because they're linked China's government they could presumably tell Apple/Google to remove those apps from the *US* app store (and I sincerely wish it would have to be done under a law that was passed specifically for the purpose, not some shady executive order from a president who thinks he's a king)

So this "tech transparency project" could point stuff out and recommend the US government (and maybe other governments) do it for their citizens, but pressuring tech companies to do it for everyone just based on their say so? Fuck that!

As for the question in the article's title, if I was using a VPN I would rather the information go to some other government than to my own government. Because one of the most important uses of VPNs is to preserve your privacy/anonymity from your OWN GOVERNMENT. Unless you have access to state secrets or are otherwise potentially vulnerable to foreign blackmail I think you should ALWAYS prefer some other country's government having access to things you want to hide rather than your own government. Because even if you trust your own government today you might not trust the one you have tomorrow - as the unfortunate lesson of the US is teaching us all right now in real time.

What the hell is Xi going to do with my browsing data? He doesn't care about me, I am and never will be of any importance to China's government. But my own government, who knows maybe some tech zillionaire supposedly making the government more "efficient" slurps it up and sells it to advertisers or feeds it to his pet AI.

[Scene it all]

Re: Why should Apple/Google pull them?

Plus, the US government is in a much better place to do something to me than the CPC is. My email provider is not based in the US either.

[Anonymous Coward]

Qihoo 360

I believe Qihoo 360 analyzed some malware from the big suits a while ago, then got listed in the export controls.

[Uncle Slacky]

Better them than Five Eyes

What does China care, unless I visit there? I'm far more concerned about what the Five Eyes can do to me.

[llaryllama]

Re: Better them than Five Eyes

This seems a rather dangerous and flippant outlook if you spend any time studying history leading up to World War II.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Better them than Five Eyes

Does it?

I'm in FAR more danger from the wanna-be Hitler in the White House than I am from China.

China would be my primary concern if I was in China or Taiwan. I'm not. I'm in the US. And the current US president is having people abducted off the street and sent to a concentration camp in El Salvador.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does China do this?

Do Chinese border control scan your social media and then put you in a detention centre before deporting you if you've criticised the president?

They may check your devices if they feel a need, but they aren't a patch on ICE ICE baby: https://www.thetimes.com/travel/advice/could-my-social-media-stop-me-getting-through-customs-7vh5tjpmd

[razorfishsl]

Re: Does China do this?

you really have no clue......

they don't target you at the border....

and when they do target you, you are not likely to even detect it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Does China do this?

You really have no clue...

The first part was largely rhetorical, and a swipe against the USA situation, not China's.

[doublelayer]

Re: Does China do this?

Actually, yes, they do scan devices at the border or wherever else they may choose, and they've been doing it for longer, which is a problem. And they do deport you if you say something about their leader, although that's not the worst thing they do to such people. You might have had a point if you were trying to compare them and negatively describe the US's unjust and possibly illegal actions by pointing out the pages they copied out of China's book, but by asking whether they do the same while implying the answer is no, you're just showing that you don't know what you're talking about.

[razorfishsl]

LOL... that is barely even the tip of it.......

[Pascal Monett]

I don't trust ANYONE with my private browsing data

But there's fuck all I can do about it. Somebody has to answer my request to connect to El Reg, and the first in line is my Internet provider, or my phone company if I'm using my "smart"phone. I have no choice about that, and what they do with that data vs what they say they do is beyond my control.

Google has its sticky fingers everywhere, thanks to its "free" libraries every web developer is using these days, and it's kind of difficult to block that 100% of the time (but I try my best with NoScript and uBlock Origin - obviously my default browser is not Chrome). Facebook is easier to block, but only because I don't have an account, so I don't care and no website will refuse to work if I do. As for Apple, I don't have an iPhone or anything Cupertino-based, so that is also blocked by default (thank God for NoScript).

Xi is not my problem. As mentioned before, he doesn't give a gnat's fart about me and there's nothing he can do to me. If he gets my browsing info from my VPN provider, so be it.

But there is one thing that gets my hackles up every time :

"Chinese law can force any China-based company to assist national intelligence agencies and share customer data with Beijing "

That kind of declaration should automatically be followed by "just like the USA can do to any American-based company with its National Security letters".

Enough of this gratuitious China bashing. NSA letters have existed since 1978, so I think it is safe to say that Beijing is just following Washington's lead on this subject.

[Snowy]

Re: I don't trust ANYONE with my private browsing data

Is there any country that does not do it?

[cookiecutter]

Re: I don't trust ANYONE with my private browsing data

Yes the USA can't really bitch BUT the difference is that the USA isn't committing genocide against its own people. Try searching for Tianniman square on Chinese Google.

[Pascal Monett]

Not the same subject.

That is Beijing managing China and suppression of Free Speech, which has never been included in whatever serves them as a Constitution. That is not hoovering up browsing data.

[Anonymous Coward]

Article 35 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.

https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20/content_WS5ed8856ec6d0b3f0e9499913.html

It's very definitely in there. They just ignore it. Which is what the tiny-fingered, ferret-wearing, cheeto-faced shitgibbon wants to do too.

[Pascal Monett]

Interesting.

I stand corrected.

Not that it makes much of a difference.

[Inkey]

Re: I don't trust ANYONE with my private browsing data

All countries try and hide thier atrocities... and proving genacide in a country you have never been to is rich... to say the least ....

You can however find a clip of Madeleine Albright say she well "we" think it was worth it ... when asked about the war in iraq, and half a million children died ... and thats just one us war not talking about all shit in latin america

Whats interesting is how the death toll for the tianaman square shitshow gets larger every year 600 back then and more recently 10k by the bbc...

Wounder how many lives are being ruined in la rigjt now....

It's funny you use the word genocide to decribe china's misuse of force.... what word do you use to describe what happend to innocent people who lost half a generation in iraq? Democracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

due diligence

If someone is shopping for a security product and can't be bothered to even check the country of origin, that's on them.

[martinusher]

What 'private' browsing data?

The only way you can keep anything private is by keeping it local and/or encrypting it. Once it gets out there its anyone's.

The Chinese have a large population but even so I think they'd find a lot better uses for their time than digging around Joe Blow's porn stash. Most of us don't have any data that's worth even looking at (scammers apart). If I was someone who was likely to have sensitive data then I'd make damn sure it was either nowhere near the public Internet or encrypted in such a fashion that it was meaningless (and that's just not code -- you can tell a lot about data not just from the data proper but from the patterns of use of that data).

[IamAProton]

Re: What 'private' browsing data?

Processing is mostly automated.

Once they figure out you are into "my little ponies" they might blackmail you, even if you will never go to china.

Low chance? sure, but why take the risk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bit rich

Store my data on any American cloud service, anywhere, and the American govt can demand access and I get no objections

[Anonymous Coward]

Most Chinese people use VPNs to access pornographic content rather than for political reasons.

This is a very interesting phenomenon. In fact, most Chinese people are not concerned about domestic politics, but because the dissemination of pornographic content is illegal in China.

[Pen-y-gors]

Not a problem

The only websites I look at over my Chinese VPN are the one with AI-generated pics of Xi pleasuring himself with under-age donkeys.

[Ball boy]

Shirley they have their uses

If I wanted to blow the whistle on corruption involving senior-level ministers anywhere in the west, then going via a Chinese VPN might be a good choice - less chance of anyone over there willingly handing over logs to any US/UK/EU security services. Sadly, I imagine they're favoured by a number of less salubrious users who want another layer of isolation: drug or arms dealers, for example. Again, as long as the deals stay well clear of the middle kingdom's territory or interests and they can't be accused of knowingly aiding, etc. then I doubt they'd have any real motivation to spill the beans.

On the flip side, if I wanted to send details of my latest chip fab, world-beating car, corporate investment strategy or whatever, I would probably be well advised to select a VPN whose integrity I'm more likely to be able to hold to account.*

*for reasonable values of 'account'