Google app being flagged as a virus by Huawei phones
Google app being flagged as a virus by Huawei phones
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.
Pot protecting users from kettle
I'd trust a Huawei phone less than I would a Google phone. Much less.
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¯
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.
I'd trust Huawei, being employee owned[1][2], more than an American corporation.
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3856761
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
Yet, many European governments don’t trust Chinese tech companies at all.
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.
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.
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?
I fucking hate tankies. You go so far out of your way to be awful bastards
Google is a virus. Just like all the chinese spyware you find on a Huawei phone.
They are not wrong.
Is it wrong?
Beat me to it, it collects an ungodly amount of PII
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.
Sure but what does "enticing users to pay with adult content" mean?
Sundar wants them feet pics
There are rumors circulating, why Israeli intelligence failed to sniff out about Hamas's attack plan, because Hamas used Huawei phones (without gapps)
Duck duck go is Microsoft second layer.
LOL Incorrectly
I thought Huawei wasn't able / allowed to use Google Services due to the tradewar...
They aren't.
But Android is Android, users can install any APK they want
I have the P30 which is fully Googled up, I think it's just the newer models?!
That means they have good antivirus.
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.
Based Huawei
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.
1%based for calling Google malware 99% bullshit for being probably at least equally bad
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.
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.
I mean, Google most certainly is spyware so I don’t see how it’s wrong.
Just like every single bit of Huawei software, they just send your data to the Chinese government instead lol
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.
Agree