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Samsung Devices Allegedly Use Qihoo 360 Spyware to Phone Home to China
Samsung Phones Said to Come with Chinese "Spyware" Phoning Home
Samsung phones and tablets allegedly come with what is being described as "spyware" that communicates with Chinese servers regularly.
A reddit thread that has gone viral includes a closer look at a feature called Device Care and available on all Samsung phones and tablets.
As Samsung itself confirms, the "Storage" module of Device Care is "powered by 360," but no information is provided as to why it phones back home to China.
While Qihoo 360, the company that Samsung points to, has previously been involved in several privacy scandals that included hidden data collection, little is known about what's happening on phones and tablets developed by the South Korean manufacturer.
Chinese Spyware Found On All Samsung Phones
A fan of Samsung phones has discovered Chinese spyware which is installed by default by Samsung, can't be removed, and for which has been sending packets to Chinese addresses. The storage scanner in the Device Care section of Samsung phones is a mandatory software install protected by the system making it hard to remove. No comment has been made by Samsung about why it includes this spyware in its main line of mobile phones.
Do you packet sniff your phone to find out where it is sending your data?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @01:49AM (1 child)
Sure. but the billions of people in Asia does though. China have already taken out the South China Sea which affects all of South East Asia.
and it does affect Americans as well. If you have any social ties to anyone working for the US government, you're a potential leverage the spooks can compromise to get to who they want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @06:59AM
Unlikely for multiple reasons, the most simple of which being that China has 1.4 billion people and an increasingly huge chunk of highly qualified people - some of whom are coming to the US and taking on highly sensitive positions while retaining Chinese loyalty - as evidenced by the countless number of people we have caught trying to bring information back to China, which is undoubtedly a tiny fraction of the total number of people who succeeded in doing so. No need to do anything crazy when the status quo is already hugely beneficial to you, and only getting moreso.
And the crazy side would result in an international fiasco if discovered, destroy trust in Chinese companies*, have a decent chance of resulting in double agent type scenarios, and much more. I put the asterisk there since we have all of this paranoia about Chinese companies but it's based on nothing but conspiracy theories for now. Yes China uses their surveillance mechanism to create social credit scores in China, to determine if Uyghurs are likely to radicalize, and more. But those are all domestic affairs, similar to how we know our government is collecting and harvesting all sorts of information from all the major tech companies here for their purposes. Only difference is we keep how we use it secret whereas China, who has fewer concerns about appearances, is somewhat more open about it.