The Apple and Google app stores continue to offer private browsing apps that are surreptitiously owned by Chinese companies, more than six weeks after they were identified in a Tech Transparency Project report. Apple and Google may also be profiting from these apps, which put Americans’ privacy and U.S. national security at risk, TTP found.
The apps are virtual private networks (VPNs), which promise to mask a user’s identity as they browse the internet. But Chinese-owned VPNs raise serious privacy and security concerns for Americans because Chinese companies can be forced to share user data with the Chinese government under the country’s national security laws. VPNs have access to particularly sensitive user data since they see all of a person’s web activity.
As someone living in Europe I’m more concerned with American companies harvesting my data.
Do you trust the NSA, ICANN, IANA (all headquartered in the USA) etc and that SSL/TLS cert authorities haven’t been backdoored to hell and back? (Probably a decade+ since top level cert authorities were found to be backdoored but who cares amirite.)
Don’t use sketchy VPN apps, at all. The fact that they’re Chinese owned is irrelevant.
Honestly, I wouldn’t trust most commercial VPNs these days, especially the ones that are nearly always on 100% discount sales. If they’re not making their revenue from customers, they must be making it some other way. And that’s a mighty fine data set they’re sitting on.
Oh no, China is stealing your data! Wait, America is also stealing your data and you don’t care? Hmm.
Removed by mod
About as much as I trust the yanks.
you can move onto proxies, or even host your own, but thats going to cost money.(yea thats what the of ACCOUNTS, AND LINK FARMING accts use on reddit these days). VPn is way to compromised and abused already.
So, trust your VPN service. Makes sense.
it can’t be worse that what DOGE has done.
What’s China going to do with your data? Far less than your own country can.
If the choice is between China and your own country, China every day.
That is until they have enough data to be able to sabotage a major part of your country’s infrastructure and use it as a bargaining chip to exploit your country, then it won’t be less damage. Its just theoretical, but we know that’s one of the reason any country collect data from another country’s citizens.
Just weigh the risks every time instead of defaulting to a position of China all the time.
China hasn’t revealed itself to be Cthulhu, unlike the US or Russia. So for me yes, it’s China at every turn unless a local option exists.
What does that even mean?
It means I trust China more than the US.
I don’t see a problem here. Capitalism has already done this. At least they have competition.
My problem is his general conclusion to always prefer China. Making predetermined decision without considering the situation you’re in is kinda stupid.
But that’s not the choice
You don’t think it is, but yeah it pretty much is. The only VPN company I know of who has proven in court that they don’t keep logs is PIA.
So choose PIA lol
Sincerely, what is China going to do with it? Open a Chinese bank account in my name? If any institution in the us accepts account openings from a chinese or vpn ip address then it cant be trustworthy enough to ever affect me.
