Hi all,
I don’t really know how to ask this question. On one of my devices, I downloaded a web browser (Opera) and one of my friends made fun of me, saying that “you better like China knowing all the stuff you do online”.
I read the Opera website and it says it’s a Norwegian company, but on Wikipedia it does say it was bought by a Chinese company.
My question is: what does “China” do with my personal browsing data? Why is it useful for them? (and who are we referring to here, is that the Chinese government, a private company, who?)
I’m looking forward to learn more about digital privacy, but I don’t currently understand the “obviousness” of how it is wrong to use Opera.
I’m a tech enthusiast (hence why I’m here), but I’m cognizant that I have large knowledge gaps in some of these topics.
Thank you in advance.
China has state-coordinated schemes to both suppress its own internal population (which may not concern you if you aren’t Chinese and never go to China) and to manipulate people globally (which everyone should be concerned about).
While it’s true that all countries collect data for the purposes of propaganda, China does so at a scale and with a level of precision and control that pretty much no other country can reach.
You should be trying to limit the amount of data that ANY group gets about you, but some groups will do more nefarious things with it than others. Google for example just wants to advertise to you. Which is bad, I’m not trying to downplay that, just contextualize it. China wants to control every aspect of everything you do. China’s capacity to control people outside its own borders is limited, but growing. The more data China gets, the more leverage it has to manipulate, coerce, and control.
Like, I go to a website and research clown outfits or biscuit preparation, what the hell is China going to do with this information? Banking info I would be concerned. Any more specific examples of foul play come hitherdom? The question really isn’t being answered.
If they control the browser they can potentially intercept everything you see and do. Banking info, whether you looked up Tianmen square, who you talk to, who you trust… They can also infer personality from your browsing history. Looked at clown outfits just before watching porn? Maybe you’ll get a letter blackmailing you or else they’ll divulge your fetish to your family and loved ones. This is not fiction - China has been caught doing this to political personalities, and those are only the ones that failed.
The browser can also serve as a gateway for them to install persistent monitoring software on your OS, or turning your machine into part of a botnet.
They can correlate that information with your other browsing habits and start to form a picture about the sort of person who shares your interests, regardless of how bizarre those might be.
It’s not an exact science because everyone is different, but once they have that picture they can start pushing the buttons of one person like and derive some conclusions about how the rest of that cohort, including you, will react.
They don’t even have to be successful all of the time. Just more than would be expected from random chance.
A stone in the right place can divert the mightiest of rivers.
I think concerns about China in specific are overblown.
That being said, what we’ve learned about the topic from US tracking programs (slight chuckle at China having scope or abilities beyond anyone else in that regard) is that all information can be fed into what is essentially a statistical model of interests, behaviors, expressed opinions, and contacts.
From that, you can determine a few things that are specifically “useful”.
The first useful thing is the ability to tell if someone’s behavior has changed in an unexpected way. If someone starts talking to someone new via text message and they “shouldn’t” know each other (no common acquaintances, never at the same place at the same time, no shared interests) you have an anomaly that can be processed further.
The next useful thing is once you have this model of expected behavior you can start modeling stuff like “A talked to B, B to C and then C changed behavior. A talked to D and D talked to E, and E changed behavior”, and more or less direct chains.
This effectively tells you that A is influencing the behaviors of C and D. By tracking how influence (and money and stuff) flows through a network of people, you can extrapolate things like leadership, communication pathways, and material support pipelines. If you’re the US, you can then send a seal team to shoot someone.
If you’re, supposedly, anyone doing this you can more selectively target people for influence based on the reach that it’ll have, use your models to target them better, and generally improve the quality of your attempted influence.
I personally have my doubts it’s being used that way because it’s just as effective and far cheaper to hire a public opinion research group to pay a significant sample of people $5 to figure out how to make better propaganda, and then like 75¢ each to get Facebook to target the right people.
It’s really only valuable if you eventually care about an individual. Most unfortunate privacy violations are aggregates.
Even if it’s not directly actionable or a threat, you should still be wary about letting your browsing habits leak because the information can much more plausibly be used for phishing purposes.
If you just bought some clown outfits and get an email about your clown plants being held at customs you’re a lot more likely to click to figure out what’s going on.
Personally I think this approach is used to rewind history for an investigation. If soemeone falls under suspicion for whatever reason, investigators can rewind history to find all their movements, all their connections, all their calls and posts and everyone who looked at them. Even in the absence of abuses of authority, that casts a pretty wide net.
Am I comfortable that whoever has access to all that collected data will never abuse their authority? Am I comfortable that when I get caught in such a big net, they’ll quickly realize I’m not a valid catch and throw me back without harm? Even if they have the best intentions, this is for all time: do you really think the world will always go perfectly? I’d rather not be in that net in the first place, even if it makes life harder for national security investigators
China has state-coordinated schemes to both suppress its own internal population (which may not concern you if you aren’t Chinese and never go to China) and to manipulate people globally (which everyone should be concerned about).
While it’s true that all countries collect data for the purposes of propaganda, China does so at a scale and with a level of precision and control that pretty much no other country can reach.
Is there any actual evidence that the Chinese state spends more money or man-hours attempting to collect, analyze, and manipulate public opinion than - say - The NSA? Or, for that matter, Google AdSense?
You should be trying to limit the amount of data that ANY group gets about you, but some groups will do more nefarious things with it than others. Google for example just wants to advertise to you.
Firstly, isn’t that the entire threat that this data analysis presents? A malicious actor wants to accrue enough information about you such that they know exactly what to say in order to manipulate your behaviors and beliefs. That’s advertising in a nutshell.
Secondly, why is the threat of a domestic advertiser somehow less existential than that of a foreign one? Does Sundar Pichai have more of my best interests at heart than Zhang Yiming purely by proximity? Or is this purely a “Chinese people think evil, American people think good, its just in our natures” thing?
Thirdly, if Chinese investment in American technology is such an existential threat to our freedom of thought and rational action, why is the American military industrial complex so glacially slow in their response? You want me to believe that the Chinese government is brainwashing Americans en mass with their evil TikToks, and we’ve got proof, but we still want to let them keep doing it until November (squarely in the middle of election season) before they’re forced to divest or stop serving content?
This all just strikes me as xenophobic hysteria, especially given the blaise attitude towards domestic advertisers (oil companies lying about climate change, crypto shills lying about their financial risks, Joe Rogan/Alex Jones types pushing phony nutrition supplements, political mega-donors lying about one another’s platforms, outright scammers just trying to fleece you).
I’m not a US citizen but I’d say if you don’t like US overthrowing governments all around the world, then you should be double concerned it happening to your country. Those data are really powerfull tool for such thing and they have been used for it in case of Brexit. It’s quite shocking to compare a foreign superpower with an advertising company and put it on the same level.
Is there any actual evidence
I knew this topic would bring you people out of the woodwork. I’m not interested. Fuck the CCP and its Winnie the Pooh dictator, free Tibet, Taiwan is the real China, Tiananmen Square Tiananmen Square Tiananmen Square.
Block me or I’ll keep saying forbidden things and your handlers will start to get mad.
Block me or I’ll keep saying forbidden things
Block me or I’ll keep saying forbidden things and your handlers will start to get mad.
“I know I’m right and you’re wrong, no matter what the reality is” isn’t the flex you think it is.
Also go ahead lay everything out here and let’s see if it deters everyone you consider a CCP shill to stop as you’re told by your handlers.
brainwashed psycho.
https://mullvad.net/en/why-privacy-matters
Excellent set of articles on why.
It’s not about what country has it, it’s about that they CAN have it, and what they could do with it.
We continue to spiral into a dystopian area. To say it won’t happen to you, remember that period tracking apps are being used to track women and arrest them. If I was a Chinese data center grabbing data, this is a nice piece of info to sell and make a profit out of it.
But what about you? Surely you don’t do anything. But lets think of a hypothetical. Maybe you visit sites in Opera that are anti-Russian, a news site that had a story about Putin shitting his pants. We’ll with all the data stored, they can identify who you are. You’re now on a Russian list of people who hate Russia. Maybe you’ll go, “But I’ll never go to Russia.” But who knows?
When women were using those apps, they didn’t expect it to be used to get them arrested.
People who practice good privacy have a significantly less chance of getting shit on. So why not?
The pessimistic view: basically everything you do online can be tracked, sold, and bought by anyone with a few bucks. Poor online security means you have no privacy regardless of browser, while good (or at least “better”) online security is possible with almost any browser.
If your friend is advocating switching browsers, but with no other behavioral changes, that’s just a false sense of security, which may be worse.
To more directly address the question, unless you are a Chinese dissident, “China” having your browsing data isn’t any better or worse that Google or Microsoft or Meta having that same data. Spoiler: for the average user, they already do.
I’m not a Chinese dissident but it’s not inconceivable that I might want to go to China one day for business or pleasure. That would be a bad idea considering how vocal I’ve been about hating the CCP. If they’ve correlated my statements to my identity, they could have me arrested on trumped up charges when my flight lands.
Google or Meta wouldn’t do that. It’s not even in the same ballpark as bad as a state level actor.
Good example is this woman who went to Russia
