Page 1 of Are Huawei Spying on us?

When the US started making noises about preventing Chinese tech firms like Huawei from selling their phones in their country, my initial reaction was to laugh. After all, the Mate 20 Pro is amazing piece of kit that I would love to own.

But I've been reading more and mulling on the hazy info that's available, and now it seems feasible that we might be being spied on via our smartphones and other smart devices.

So how concerned are the rest of you, and do you have any tips to prevent it happening?

I'm a stock Android user, currently on Oreo with a Razer phone andI have AVG running, but is it enough to feel safe?

Still alive and kicking. You can't get rid of me that easily!

Quote:
Sue Brown says...
"but is it enough to feel safe?"
In a world where a 15 year old on the autistic spectrum can hack the CIA?
No.
I make a routine assumption that anything I post can eventually be seen by anyone.
Check my bank accounts daily, though there's naff all in them.

T'other half had her account hacked a week or two back which to be fair the bank were on top of straight away stopping a large payment and querying a load of smaller ones all made within a minute or two of each other.
New card, PIN and money back in the account in short order.

As to Hooray I'd be more worried that there were back doors available on a much higher level than individual users.


Snaps

Quote:
Sue Brown says...
"and now it seems feasible that we might be being spied on via our smartphones and other smart devices"
Google and Facebook already do this, security researches have demonstrated it. I'm not overly sure there is any evidence at all that Huawei are doing anything other than being guilty by association.

That isn't to say they aren't or won't, more nobody has any evidence of it. The US government is also most likely still doing this, they've been caught doing it before.


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One of the biggest problems now is 'the cloud' storage, where information on you is stored remotely, away from your computer, tablet, phone, etc. The cloud can be hacked by all. I never use it for storage if I can avoid it,, even if it is on free offer.

I also agree with Snaps that anything written, photos, data, on-line bank details, can be gathered by whoever if they are interested in you for some reason, be it financial, target adverting or even spying on you.

I realised years ago that tech was being used to gather info, and this goes way back to the seventies, where I first lived in a village near a Military base in the South of England, and there were always clicks on the line when making a phonecall, where the locals told us that all calls were taped at the exchange and were then taken to the base for analaysis. I thought it a joke, till I actually saw a lorry with military plates and military personnel at the exchange uplifing a massive metal case. Yes, that seemed proof that were recording conversations, but remember, this was at the height of the cold war. I was then wondering if there was a spy in the village, maybe the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker? 

This was one of the reasons I became open to a lot of conspiracy theories and 'sorta out there' theories, and many over the years have turned out to be true.

Conclusion: And so tech over the decades has got a lot smarter, till we have now reached the mega data collection stage. So be wary!

Quote:
bandicoot says...
"where I first lived in a village near a Military base in the South of England, and there were always clicks on the line when making a phonecall, where the locals told us that all calls were taped at the exchange and were then taken to the base for analaysis. I thought it a joke, till I actually saw a lorry with military plates and military personnel at the exchange uplifing a massive metal case. Yes, that seemed proof that were recording conversations, but remember, this was at the height of the cold war."
So you thought that rather than it might be some military equipment (i.e part of a military exchange co-located) that had been upgraded or taken away for repair?

---------

Si Wooldridge
Reviewer

http://synth.myreviewer.com

Could be, but it was the clicking that was the give away.

Well in those days the only way of recording would be large tape reels, so I would assume it was a rack of tape recorders that was taken away every so often, and replaced with a new set. Anyway, thats what the locals said 

All they ever got from me on the phone anyway, was calling for a taxi or talking to my then girlfriend, who later became my wife 

Quote:
bandicoot says...
"All they ever got from me on the phone anyway, was calling for a taxi or talking to my then girlfriend, who later became my wife"
Did you double check she wasn't a spy? :)


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She might have been spying for Partick Thistle, as she was from the other side of the wall. ....Hadrian's wall

Took me ages to figure out she was not talking about a flower 

Quote:
Sue Brown says...
"When the US started making noises about preventing Chinese tech firms like Huawei from selling their phones in their country"I didn't know that any of this was referring to the phone side of things but more of the infrastructure/networking side.
Anyway, no, I don't think they're spying on us - and as already said, am pretty sure the likes of Google and Facebook already getting far more useful info out of most of us than the likes of Huawei could.
I do have the Mate 20 Pro and it is an amazing piece of kit.  I actually have another one, still boxed and sealed that I'll probably sell soon.

Ste