Vulnerabilities in Sogou Keyboard encryption expose keypresses to network eavesdropping.

  • godless@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I live in China and this software is cancerous not just in the encryption failure, it also nestles into a computer like a trojan. Creates 2 fallback installations and will reinstall itself after removal if you reboot in between, unless you get rid of all 3 installations at once, where they are deliberately trying to obfuscate the uninstall button (triple confirmation, swapping the confirm/cancel buttons and button background colors, etc.).

    It’s a nasty piece of crap that come preloaded on any phone (android, at least) and Windows-PC here.

    • Anamana@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Do people generally try to circumvent it? Are they too scared to uninstall it? Or do they just not care?

        • Anamana@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Why? Useful for safety and security of the society?

          Edit: Why downvotes? I’m trying to put myself in their shoes, it’s not how I view it lol

          • godless@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Comes with a built in translator and spell checker, and since access to Google translate is blocked, that’s often the only alternative.

              • godless@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Nah. They don’t know Google translate. Or Google, for that matter. They know what they are supposed to know.

                Of course some people know better, and those are the ones who will eventually get around the block - finding and installing a VPN is not rocket science, not even here. But if you keep 98% of the population contained, the rest won’t reach critical mass.

              • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 year ago

                Yeah, wtf is that equivalency?

                “Why do people smoke”

                “Well some people like to eat at restaurants or watch movies with their friends so”

              • coffeebiscuit@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                It was a “what about” analogy. It compares a app that steals data without the users consent and the other one is the keyboard app. Both seem to be wanted by consumers despite the steeling parts.

                • Anamana@feddit.de
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                  1 year ago

                  Yeah but a social media platform has completely different qualities. Therefore the reasons for people how and why they use them will be completely different. Also the keyboard app is forced on the phones by the state while the use of social media platforms is optional. Just too many different factors at play here imo.

          • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            Some weird downvotes, and I want to know too. Why does a keyboard app mean anything to anyone? The keyboards included on iOS and latest Android versions are great.

            • thekinghaslost@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Don’t know about this keyboard or Chinese, but a language specific feature might be one of the reason.

              I use SwiftKey and I love how it supports multilingual autocorrect and prediction for Indonesian and English without needing to switch between keyboard language.

              iOS built in keyboard supports multilingual typing for some languages, but not Indonesian.

              I assume people love it also because some specific feature that doesn’t exist in the stock keyboard.

      • boooooboo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        My guess is that it might either be more accurate in predictions or some additional convenience factors that makes typing this logographic language much easier and faster lol.

        Or people are also simply used to it since it’s everywhere.

      • godless@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Sure. Foreigners aren’t really sanctioned though, that’s more of a risk for the locals. But even then usually only if they want to get someone disappeared and don’t have anything substantial against them.

  • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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    1 year ago

    Alright China shills, you can stop changing the subject to how Google and the US are the “same”.

    The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city’s major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June and engaged in bloody clashes with demonstrators attempting to block them, in which many people – demonstrators, bystanders, and soldiers – were killed. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.[15][16][17][18][19][20]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre

    If you lived in China you’d likely not know about this, since people who talk about it go to prison.

    Yeah the US is exactly like this so let’s not talk about the Chinese government being awful to their citizens /s

    • dingleberry@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Simple solution is to block lemmygrad and hexbear in your app. That cuts down quite a few tankies and mainlaind Taiwan shills.

      • Notorious_handholder@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Imagine being in Taiwan and having full access to information about China and the west and still shilling for China. Those types of people should be looking for a dominatrix, not a political philosophy…

        • evilgiraffe666@ttrpg.network
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          1 year ago

          I think they might be using “mainland Taiwan” as a way of saying China - Taiwan is an island which China thinks is “theirs” for some reason.

            • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              The politicians have to play nice and be polite. Right up until they don’t have to anymore.

              The people can recognize that Taiwan is what happened to the last freely elected government of Western Taiwan, and that the CCCP are nothing more than despots and authoritarian tyrants that freely abuse their own people, and would absolutely be bullying the world, if they were actually as powerful as they claim to be.

              The CCCP ≠ China or the Chinese people.

              The CCCP = Western Taiwan

          • SlopppyEngineer@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            “Yes, but history…” they will say.

            And in history China used to be the opium export market of the Brits so by historic rules it has to be that again. I guess they’ll say “but that’s different”.

          • miserablegit@lemmynsfw.com
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            1 year ago

            Tbf, it was theirs - until it wasn’t. At this point, it is a bit like the British were insisting that the US was theirs.

            • ylph@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              The history of Taiwan is quite a bit more complex than that, but the PRC (current government in mainland China) has never controlled Taiwan - it was never theirs.

              Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1894 until 1945 when Japan was forced to hand it over to the ROC (the successor government to the Qing dynasty, which was the last time you could argue China controlled the island - the Qing managed to almost fully colonize it before losing it to the Japanese, although a lot of the mountainous parts of Taiwan were still mostly autonomous at that time and inhabited by aboriginal Taiwanese who continued to resist the Qing rule)

              The ROC takeover of the island is also seen as another colonization by many Taiwanese as well - the descendants of the Qing era colonists who were mostly Hokkien speakers from Fujian, while the ROC migration in 1949 was mostly Mandarin speakers from wider China, who fairly brutally imposed their rule over the island (see 4 decades of martial law, etc.)

              ROC managed to reform itself over time, and Taiwan is now a vibrant democratic country which is forging its new national identity where most people would prefer to be left alone to control their own affairs.

              • miserablegit@lemmynsfw.com
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                1 year ago

                “Taiwan” was never the administrative centre of China, come on. Some of the Chinese ruling classes fled there after the revolution. It’s like saying the capital of Germany was always Bonn.

        • AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          There’s a bunch of Taiwanese people who would welcome Chinese rule. I don’t know why… The CPC sucks my balls

        • RoundSparrow @ .ee@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Imagine being in Taiwan and having full access to information about China and the west and still shilling for China. Those types of people should be looking for a dominatrix, not a political philosophy…

          That’s kind of the history of humanity regarding religion. To some degree when the religious prophets were alive it make sense, but hundreds of years later it’s a story book (or oral tradition) and people still strive for the authority.

          We haven’t really had that many teachers like Carl Sagan who describe the history and our favoring of authority - inability to question them. It’s pretty weird, as they often aren’t attractive or good speakers, but you see people just accept almost anything they say. I mean in the USA I witnessed so many people who would trust Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones kind of blindly, and there is some mechanism at play that humanity in total seems to keep engaging.

      • Hype@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Been using lemmy for a few days and I am already feeling the need to do just that.

        • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          How so? I’ve been using since the API blackout and not seen any content from either instance.

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        mainland Taiwan

        You must mean West Taiwan. Sadly they refuse to acknowledge the authority of Taiwans government.

    • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      No one is saying Google massacred protestors, but if you’re gonna be against keyboard apps spying on you it should be irrelevant who they’re spying for. Criticizing shitty things American companies do doesn’t make you a China shill and calling everyone who does it a China shill is intellectually dishonest.

      • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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        1 year ago

        claiming that the dozen people in this thread falsely equating what China is doing to the things that happen in the US – ignoring that they are very different, and ONLY considering that they are moving attention away from the posted article – is not so much “intellectually dishonest” as it is an intentional lie with a goal. Good bye.

    • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Sir this is a Wendy’s

      Or more specifically, a thread about a phone keyboard.

      But it is true that Google and Microsoft phone home with your key strokes. That’s how they develop their predictive typing and autocorrect.

    • purahna@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      If you can’t see the fundamental intertwining of Google (or any other fortune 500 company) and the US State, then you should really start looking harder. Lobbyists, revolving door membership, corruption, tax writeoffs, corporate power being used to influence day-to-day life, really, US companies’ control over the US state is pretty similar to the Chinese State’s control over Chinese Companies. I just don’t think corporations should be in charge like y’all seem to.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It actually makes sense that Americans should talk a lot more about the shitty state of things in the US rather than the propaganda about China used to distract them.

          It also makes sense that Chinese should talk a lot more about the shitty state of things in China rather than the propaganda about the US used to distract them.

          That just leaves everybody else, looking at both countries and people in them doing the equivalent of measuring the length of turds and fighting for which one is the shortest, pointingly ignoring it’s all shit.

        • purahna@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          yeah I really do, because the average annual US foreign conflict is worse than the wildest liberal exaggeration of the worst thing China has ever done

    • ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      If you lived in China you’d likely not know about this, since people who talk about it go to prison.

      didnt happen and if it did it should happen again

    • XIIIesq@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s false equivalence.

      China killing protesters andnl silencing dissidents does not make it OK for Google or anyone else to spy on you.

        • XIIIesq@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This thread is about an app that spies on you, it is absolutely relevant to want to talk about other apps that do the same thing.

          The “yH bUt ChInA iS EvIl” rhetoric is an irrelevant distraction from the topic at hand.

      • SasquatchBanana@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That’s not what is being pointed. In China, you don’t have freedom of information. They are authoritarian, borderline totalitarian. Yeah, Google spy and the US spy on us but to say America/Google is just as bad is the false equivalence.

        • XIIIesq@lemmy.world
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          I’m not saying that America/Google is just as bad. I’m saying that in a thread discussing apps that spy on you, that talking about non-Chinese apps that also hoard your data is absolutely relevant and shouldn’t be trumped or silenced by a “yh, but China is evil tho” type comment.

    • Shaggy0291@lemmygrad.ml
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      The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city’s major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June and engaged in bloody clashes with demonstrators attempting to block them, in which many people – demonstrators, bystanders, and soldiers – were killed.

      Here’s a video of an interview with Chai Ling recorded on May 28, 1989 with reporter Philip Cunningham. Chai Ling was arguably the most influential leader of the student protesters at Tiananmen Square. In the interview she openly wishes for the soldiers to massacre the students after her instrumental role in blocking attempts by other activists to move the protest back to campuses, all while refusing to sacrifice herself.

      Notable quotes from this interview include:-

      “You, the Chinese are not worth my struggle. You are not worth my sacrifice”

      “The students keep asking what shall we do next? What can we accomplish? I feel so sad, because how can I tell them what we’re actually hoping for is bloodshed - for the moment when the government has no choice but to brazenly butcher the people?”

      “Only when the square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes. Only then will they really be united”

      “If we allow the [protesters] movement to collapse on its own, then the government will be able to wipe out all the leaders of the movement”

      Upon being asked if she will stay in the square herself after urging the students to stay she simply responded, “No, I won’t”.

      When the Tiananmen Square incident erupted in violence on June 3rd, Chai Ling escaped from Beijing by train. She was eventually smuggled to Hong Kong via Operation Yellowbird, an MI6/CIA led initiative to extract dissidents who they hoped would form the nucleus of a “Chinese democracy movement in exile”. To my knowledge, no details exist about how and when she made contact with them. She was subsequently invited to study at Princeton on a full scholarship due to her pivotal role in the Tiananmen protests. She studied Politics and International Relations there, eventually picking up an MBA from Harvard. Today, she runs an internet company called Jenzabar that she founded with her husband, the lawyer Robert Maginn, a long time associate of the Republican party, having even served as the chairman of the Massachusetts Republican party between 2011 and 2013. Their company serves more than 1300 higher education institutions worldwide, whom they provide with ERP software.

      • academician@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        What even is your point? Does one protester’s desire for violence justify the Chinese government’s violence?

      • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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        Straight up disgusting attempt to dismiss what happened at Tienanmen square. Gee I wonder what your opinion on the chinese govt is.

        • Shaggy0291@lemmygrad.ml
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          I haven’t stated an opinion either way. I’ve simply provided additional context to a historical event you chose to bring up. Why do you feel the need to respond to it in such a kneejerk manner and ascribe my motives? Does the context I’ve provided make you feel uncomfortable in some way?

          I have neither dismissed nor denied that a terrible incident happened at Tiananman square on the late hours of June 3rd 1989. I wish for those responsible for plotting and catalysing the incident to face justice for their crimes.

            • Shaggy0291@lemmygrad.ml
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              If you’re asking for my personal opinion then I’d say the US is a great deal worse than anything China has done since they took their country back, actually. It’s not even remotely close.

              What’s “telling” is the way people such as yourself latch onto anything the western media has to say about America’s geopolitical rivals, in spite of any and all the evidence to the contrary; regardless of the credibility of any of the sources. I mean, are you honestly just going to lap up whatever western media outlets tell you? The guys that told you Iraq undeniably had WMDs? The cynical scum bags who banged the drum about Gaddafi and have subsequently shrugged their shoulders while Libya now wallows with open air slave markets? Those are your respectable sources? You’re going to hang off of every word from weirdo crooks like Adrian Zenz, born-again Christian “China experts” who publicly declare they’re on a mission from God to defeat communism in China? That’s the sort of “impartial” source you’re prepared to die on a hill for? Or maybe its teenagers speculating over satellite photography they pulled up from Google maps?

              Here’s something I find telling; that you won’t engage whatsoever with the point I raised in response to you trying to grandstand over the Tiananmen incident; that you swivelled on a dime from gleefully using a massacre as a political football to clutching your pearls that someone dared to bring information to the table that contextualises that event into something more than the simplistic good vs evil narrative you were going for. Do yourself a favour and actually listen to what Chai Ling has to say; it’s been independently verified and held up in a libel case she brought against the journalists when it came to light, so you can rest assured its legitimate. Stop and think about what it really means for the student leader of those killed at Tiananmen to outright admit they were trying to get their supporters massacred after actively blocking attempts to disperse peacefully. Consider the potential significance that she was literally extracted out of her country by the intelligence services of China’s biggest geopolitical rivals. If you’re genuinely appalled with all the death from this event, don’t you think she and her benefactors have something to answer for? Or do you suppose its the place of the United States or Great Britain to stir up trouble in other countries, to dictate who should be in charge there and how their countries should be run?

              • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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                1 year ago

                yeah I don’t have time to debate people who are only interested in downplaying something really fucked up. Sorry – I won’t read this.

                • Shaggy0291@lemmygrad.ml
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                  No, what you don’t have time for is confronting inconvenient truths that fly in the face of your political agenda.

                  Again, as previously stated I am not downplaying this incident. It happened and it was terrible. If you’re not really just a coward ducking my point (Which I think you are) and you actually think that’s the case then I challenge you to point out how I’m doing so. This was a serious incident and many people died; don’t you think that the people who actively provoked the confrontation between students and soldiers should face up to what they’ve done?

              • imaqtpie@lemmy.myserv.one
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                1 year ago

                Fascinating stuff, I enjoyed reading this thread. I don’t agree that the US has been worse than China, but you do make some very good points.

        • blueberries@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          You’re just salty that the Western backed color revolution failed in China. You would have loved to cheer the West on in sucking the country dry the same that it did with Russia after they fell for the Western lies. Just compare the life expectency graphs between Russia and China after 1989:

          • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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            You’re just salty that the Western backed color revolution failed in China. You would have loved to cheer the West on in sucking the country dry the same that it did with Russia after they fell for the Western lies.

            Then how come discussion of Tienanman Square is discouraged, if not banned, instead of being widely extolled as successful defiance of the West? Clearly, unless Xi is actually a US plant, the government does not want discussion of it.

            • blueberries@lemmygrad.ml
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              Because this issue is used as a battering ram to weaken the Chinese government. The West keeps talking about there being a ‘Tiananmen Massacre’ where unarmed students were killed even though behind closed doors US diplomats admit there was no bloodshed on TIananmen. It is really hard to defend yourself against those accusations which are false when the other side doesn’t need to produce any evidence whatsoever. What is provable are the deaths of the soldiers and maoists fighting in street battles outside the square but that was not a massacre and funnily enough the West also doesn’t like to talk about those deaths

              • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Alright, I’ll contend that. Your source is thorough enough.

                Personally I still see the deaths outside Beijing in the streets to be incredibly problematic and fairly emblematic of the anti free speech/protest position by the government – but I recognize a lot of the specific rhetoric with Tienanman is about killing unarmed students. I see why this is an important distinction, it was just never a real distinction in my mind. Thank you for the clarity.

          • Syrc@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            “China’s life expectancy is great and didn’t suffer at all from the pandemic!”

            Source: China

            • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
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              I know right? It’s amazing what proper governmental response and civic mindedness of the populace can do.

              See also: Vietnam, Korea, New Zealand

              • out@lemmynsfw.com
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                1 year ago

                Didn’t China have huge problems with covid later when the rest of the world was pretty much done with it and the only reason the Chinese government stopped their stupid strategy was because of protests? The strategy worked well in the beginning but it went on for far too long. And the consequences were really bad.

                • Zaktor@lemmy.world
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                  The consequences were way better than the let 'er rip nations. If China had a death toll equivalent to the United States, they’d have 5 million dead. Even the “China is lying” people are talking about hundreds of thousands, or possibly a million, not 5 million.

                  Staying COVID-zero until better treatments and vaccines are available actually does save lives.

  • nomadjoanne@lemmy.world
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    Didn’t swiftpad or whatever its called send every key pressed to Microsoft?

    Not a China shill. China is horrible. Microsoft less so as they don’t commit genocide in slow motion. But still, I think this sort of thing is more common than we think.

    Use FOSS.

    • cunnilingsus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      I agree with the “Use FOSS” part, but I can’t help but notice a double standard thats often taken when these kinds of stories pop up. How come whenever a Chinese compant does something like this, China is always at fault? Why is it never America’s fault when something like this happens with an American company or product?

  • Goodie@lemmy.world
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    It’s stories like this that don’t surprise me as much as make me ask: How the fuck do you store and process this much data to get anything useful out of it.

    • toofpic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You just save the first 50 digits typed after some email is typed, and you have all the passwords you need!

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This only applies if a username is a email

        And if it is then what happens when people actually email someone? Autocorrect during login?

        • ultimate_question@lemmy.world
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          I don’t think they’re saying that method would yield 100% clean data but it would give you all the “necessary” data with the absolute bare minimum storage requirement. At some point people will log into their email and for most people if you have their email password you have the password they use for everything

        • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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          They weren’t describing a use case for every single type of situation.

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      I could be wrong, and this is a generalization of any country you can name, but my impression is data is stored on everyone so when they decide someday to look you up they already have all the data collected. It’s not really processed until needed.

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        Did you ever see how an average person types? It’s not the amount of data that is the problem. We have too much dumb data!

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        The real answer is compute power. At the moment it’s very expensive to run the computations necessary for big LLMs, I’ve heard some companies are even developing specialized chips to run them more efficiently. On the other hand, you probably don’t want your phone’s keyboard app burning out the tiny CPU in it and draining your battery. It’s not worth throwing anything other than a simple model at the problem.

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    Oh wow, who would have ever thought they’d do that? What a fucking surprise.

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    As if other keyboard apps are any different, I don’t think Microsoft bought SwiftKey just for fun?!

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    I don’t get it? Why are they talking in the article about not using the right type of encryption. The problem isn’t the encryption, but the fact that it is sending your keystrokes to the mothership, right?

    • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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      Every single time something sketchy is happening in Chinese tech a Lemmy user will slide the conversation and accusations to American tech. It’s a rule.

      • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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        Is not about American/Chinese government, is about privacy. ANY company or government storing your data can be extremely problematic in the future.

        Yeah the Sogou Keyboard send data to Tencent, the same thing happens or could happens with others proprietary keyboards in the future. How about trying a FOSS one?

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          It’s absolutely about the American/Chinese government, I don’t see comments forum sliding into Chinese tech on every post about Google.

          But no, swift and gboard don’t send your data to the American government.

          There’s also a dangerous misconception around here that FOSS == privacy safe. It doesn’t.

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            There is also a differece between invading your privacy and compromising your security. Both are bad, but one is much worse at least in my view. Keylogging and then sending those keystrokes back to base with a dodgey custom rolled encryption framework is not just a breach of privacy.

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        On all social media, that seems to happen and it makes me sick.

        People not knowing how scary the Chinese government is speaks volumes about the future of other countries. We had all the opportunity to see it happen and avoid it and these morons dismiss the truth and whatabout every damned thing

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        Well, we have actual evidence here of dodgy shit happening, but what about this other thing I assume is also happening based on absolutely nothing? See, both just as bad!

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          Any data you submit to Google is stored and analysed. That’s different from sending keystrokes as they happen though.

          I’m all for criticising invasive data use and collection which Google is definitely guilty of. It’s not the same as keylogging though which is not just a privacy concern but a pretty serious security one as well. Also we have actual evidence here of Tencent doing this which makes a difference to me at least.

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        I’m not sure if that’s true. You know, it’s Google. Every keystroke in your gmail email is analysed, so can’t imagine gboard is any different to them.

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      While GBoard is closed source, they have documented that they use federated learning. Meaning their model is generated on-device and only the inferences are sent to Google.

      That being said, I use OpenBoard.

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      Not if you block internet connection at system level. I think it can be done if GBoard in installed as an user app, not as a system one.

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      This “they’re all bad” shit aimed at the Chinese government makes me so sad. How many of you dullards have even heard of Tienanmen square

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        The downvotes tell me some people need to Google Tienanmen square. From outside China. Inside china, it didn’t happen. Erases from history

        • addie@feddit.uk
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          It’s not called the ‘Tiananmen Square’ by the Chinese - that’s just the name of the place. Either 六四屠殺 (June 4 massacre) or 六四鎮壓 (June 4 crackdown) would be more likely. And yes, expect loads of downvoting on Lemmy if you’re ever critical of China.

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    These findings underscore the importance for software developers in China to use well-supported encryption implementations such as TLS instead of attempting to custom design their own.

    lol.

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      And this is the only point of the article. Idk what all these other comments are on about, but this article is outlining lack of standardized protocols that made the software vulnerable to network eavesdropping.

      This doesn’t point to a big CCP conspiracy, it’s just bad design.