Huawei phones are flagging Google apps as Trojan malware, saying that the app was detected sending SMS privately, enticing users to pay with adult content, downloading/installing apps privately, or stealing private information, which may cause property damage and privacy leakage.

I’m seeing a lot of reports from users of Huawei and Honor devices have reported that their phones are incorrectly identifying Google apps as Trojan malware, specifically labeled as TrojanSMS-PA. According to the alert, this “malicious software” has the ability to send SMS messages without user consent.

  • Dojan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1396·
    1 year ago

    I mean, Google most certainly is spyware so I don’t see how it’s wrong.

      • Blue and Orange@lemm.eeEnglish
        1242·
        1 year ago

        US government having a US citizens data is worse than China having a US citizens data. Not that either scenario is ideal. But the kicker is that both probably have your data anyway.

        • Obinice@lemmy.worldEnglish
          433·
          1 year ago

          I don’t recall anyone mentioning the USA?

          I’'m not in that country, and Google’s spyware collecting data for the USA is just as concerning to me as China doing the same, neither country can be trusted to have my nation’s best interests at heart.

          • satan@r.nfEnglish
            25·
            1 year ago

            I also don’t recall anyone mentioning China before the poster above him too though. Considering the post mentions Google and Huawei, both are close to their government, mentioning their country was inevitable but only one gets precedence over the other.

            Your concerned comments only appearing when you want to defend someone doesn’t exactly make you an unbiased.

            But your post getting more votes definitely shows where the biases lie. So lose the veil of “both sides”.

    • doctordevice@lemm.eeEnglish
      192·
      1 year ago

      Hands down the worst phone I’ve had was the Nexus 6P. The battery issues were incredibly bad, to the point there was a successful class action lawsuit about it.

      Since that was a Google phone manufactured by Huawei, I have no idea how that contributes to this conversation but it seemed relevant. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      • Raiderkev@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        That thing was a POS. Thankfully Google gave me a Pixel XL with double the storage on the house because of it, but I also in hindsight worry that my personal data was being backdoored to Beijing. 10 years ago me should have been wiser to not buy a Chinese company’s phone.

      • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        343·
        1 year ago

        Huawei Smartphones collect a lot of data from their users and send it to Huawei[1], and the founder of Huawei has very strong relations to the Chinese government[2].

        [1] https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279942 “On the data privacy practices of Android OEMs”
        [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren_Zhengfei “Ren Zhengfei […] is the founder and CEO of Huawei Technologies […]. He is a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”

        A company being employee owned is a very good sign, but mainly for worker treatment. Huawei is still not managed by all of its employees; a few people in upper management are tasked to represent the owners interest, and in that process, as per usual, morals get diluted.

        You can see this by the facts that Huawei phones still violate user privacy by collecting copious amounts of data on them, or that Huawei knowingly supplies surveillance equipment to the CCP, that is used in areas where a lot of Uyghurs live and in the not-concentration-camps that reeducate Uyghurs .

        Besides that, I also just came across “Huawei states it is an employee-owned company, but this remains a point of dispute” on their wikipedia article, which at a cursory look appears to have some good points against that statement behind it.
        The paper about that is here https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3372669

        In summary, we find the following:

        • The Huawei operating company is 100% owned by a holding company, which is in turn approximately 1% owned by Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and 99% owned by an entity called a “trade union committee” for the holding company.

        • We know nothing about the internal governance procedures of the trade union committee. We do not know who the committee members or other trade union leaders are, or how they are selected.

        • Trade union members have no right to assets held by a trade union.

        • What have been called “employee shares” in “Huawei” are in fact at most contractual interests in a profit-sharing scheme.

        • Given the public nature of trade unions in China, if the ownership stake of the trade union committee is genuine, and if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned.

        • Regardless of who, in a practical sense, owns and controls Huawei, it is clear that the employees do not.

        So at every path we come to the same conclusion, the CCP will get your data, and about as much of it as google (and probably the US government) if you used their operating system and services.

        Huawei is about as trustworthy as your average trillion dollar corporation, and about as devious with their whitewashing as all others too. Google is masquerading as pro-privacy, apple as pro-repair and pro-environment, and Huawei as pro-worker and state-independent, because they all aren’t but would profit if they where perceived to be

      • Ataraxia@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        63·
        1 year ago

        Hahahah and their phones are crap. I used to have one and it had a fake camera and after I activated it my debit card info was used by a scammer. Never had that happen before. And the crappy battery became a spicy pillow very fast.

    • Joncash2@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1766·
      1 year ago

      Of course. That’s because you blindly believe the country that wiretaps it’s allies, like Merkle in Germany. That spies on its citizens using systems like Prism. Arrests journalists who report this like Assange. Yeah, those guys are totally who you should believe. And no, Huawei still hasn’t had any evidence against them, only conjecture from that country.

      And I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to call me naive and that Huawei definitely does it. But yes go on trusting the country with a laundry list of violations.

      • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        414·
        1 year ago

        So you are saying that Huawei is better than Google, because Huawei has less suspicion about it than the US government, because we should not conflate a company from a country with the government og that country?

        While you are conflating Google and the US government without even so much as acknowledging that?

        If we are being fair, we must accept both the USA and China have the means to get data out of their companies, and have done so frequently. If we thus compare either Google and Huawei or USA and China, in both cases we can make out the shinier turd of the two clearly.

        Now can we go back to hating both of them please?

          • hark@lemmy.worldEnglish
            23·
            1 year ago

            Better the devil sitting right next to you than the devil that is far away in a different country?

          • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            203·
            1 year ago

            And they occasionally need to be debated anyway.
            Like with conspiracies and religious cults, not debating them allows them to pull people in, while debating them both gives those vulnerable the ability to see the issues with them, and it allows those already believing a pathway to exit.

        • xep@kbin.social
          103·
          1 year ago

          conflate a company from a country with the government of that country

          It’s actually okay to do this for China, because just about every private enterprise has a CCP cell now. It’s important to understand how state capitalism works with the CCP and China.

        • Joncash2@lemmy.mlEnglish
          431·
          1 year ago

          I’m saying that the only hate for Huawei comes from the US government. Who constantly lies. So using their lies to form an opinion on Huawei is idiotic… I didn’t actually bring google into this at all.

          • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            182·
            1 year ago

            I have seen plenty of independent hate, and my hown hate has certainly developed independently too.
            Even in politics other countries have come to the same conclusion, some of which even against US influence, while certainly others where pulled along by them.

            Also did you notice that you jsut assumed I was completely influenced by the US, as in that you hold the innate belief that everyone who disagrees on this must obviously be doing so because they fell victim to their propaganda?

            I didn’t actually bring google into this at all.

            I’d trust a Huawei phone less than I would a Google phone. Much less.

            [your comment]

            • Joncash2@lemmy.mlEnglish
              526·
              1 year ago

              Yeah a lot of people are influenced by US propaganda. That shouldn’t be surprising. However, let’s look at what experts in other countries that are not America say.

              https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-europe-britain/britain-managing-huawei-risks-has-no-evidence-of-spying-official-idUSKCN1Q91PM

              https://phys.org/news/2018-12-evidence-huawei-spying-german-watchdog.html

              But those voices are drowned out because, well US propaganda is very powerful. So much so that yeah, it influences individuals.

              *Edit: And yes, US propaganda is so powerful it goes well beyond it’s borders affecting individuals in other nations as well. I’m not asking you to believe me, I’m asking you to question where you got those opinions from.

              • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                131·
                1 year ago

                First of, your articles are about telco hardware, not smartphones software.

                The german case basically boils down to Germany wanting independence in their critical infrastructure. At least officially this is so China can’t affect them by for example stopping exports of repair components. Basically your source is clickbait but without the release. »German governments information security branch says no evidence of Huawei spying … they say the boycott happened because of strategic resource independence in networking technology«

                The space of classical newspaper articles is not in a good state, basically it’s almost entirely propagandized to death. So you need to know your sources, please don’t be the one throwing around a phys.org article on politics like it’s credible information.

                source on the Germany thing

                I could clear up this case because I happen to know that “die Zeit” (German for “the Time”) is one of the few remaining relatively independent sources for stuff relating to Germany (they are biased to follow German politics in coverage but not content, currently). I also track them closely for any changes to that status, basically if they fall to anyones propaganda, the first ones to bring that to light and point it out will be the opposing propaganda. Here is their article, for your translators pleasure:
                https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2023-03/5g-ausbau-bundesregierung-verbot-huawei

                ⁤
                your source kinda goes into that direction at the end at least

                But some observers raised eyebrows at the BSI’s apparent dismissal of cyber security risks concerning Huawei.

                “I believe it’s wrong to suggest that the concerns about Chinese espionage are unfounded and easy to detect,” telecom security expert Ronja Kniep told AFP.

                “Even if Huawei has no official relationship with the Chinese government, that doesn’t mean Chinese services aren’t using the company and its technology as vehicles for espionage.”

                All three of Germany’s main mobile network operators use infrastructure provided by Huawei, Spiegel pointed out.

                So apparently the opinion of “the BSI” here is wildly out of line with Germany’s government’s general opinion at the time.

                but wait there’s more

                So apparently in Germany there is this “BSI-gate” of sorts, around the incompetence and potential Russian and Chinese relations of “Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Arne Schoenbohm” (as he is quoted in your source).
                So either way this person was extremely untrustworthy in this matter here.

                ⁤

                So now to the other source. Reuters is at least well known, and the article has an author, so that’s nice.

                I looked into the matter somewhat. Around the same date as your article, the BBC wrote

                To monitor the company, the UK set up the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre, which comes under the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

                In March 2019, it said it hadn’t found evidence of malicious Chinese state activity, but it did identify some serious defects in Huawei’s software engineering and cyber-security competence.

                Seems they harshened their stance after US influence around 2020 to me too, but it’s not like they where entirely unsuspicious before that influence either.

                • Joncash2@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  213·
                  1 year ago

                  Right so no evidence, just suspicion from the US was enough for them to harden their stance.

                  Your “rebuttals” doesn’t change any facts on the ground.

              • hark@lemmy.worldEnglish
                312·
                1 year ago

                They don’t want to think about it and would rather just mash the downvote button on you for not saying the “correct” words as taught to them by their friendly neighborhood multimedia empire.

  • Wothe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    282·
    1 year ago

    Unfortunately, it’s true… Monitoring, data collection, implementing ads, and there’s so little security for our accounts. Idk, I’ve been using Google less than ever since ChatGPT came out. And DuckDuckGo.

    • Free Palestine 🇵🇸@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      45·
      1 year ago

      You really think that just because they don’t have Google services it’s not spyware? On a Huawei phone your data won’t be sent to Google, it will just be sent to the Chinese government instead.

    • Free Palestine 🇵🇸@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      118·
      1 year ago

      Oh yeah the Chinese garbage phone that has tons of spyware and will send your data to the CCP is so based because it doesn’t include Google spyware. Makes sense.

      • hark@lemmy.worldEnglish
        74·
        1 year ago

        and what will the CCP do with that information? Meanwhile, I know that the NSA, CIA, FBI, local law enforcement, countless advertising agencies, and all sort of other agencies in the US that can actually do things with that information. Even if you don’t live in the US, chances are that you live in a country with an extradition treaty with the US.

  • serpineslair@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Someone in my family had this, reluctantly restarted the phone to make the message go away as I found it to be a very dodgy sounding message. Good to know that it won’t do any long term damage to hit ignore the next time it pops up.