this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023

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369

Google app being flagged as a virus by Huawei phones (stackdiary.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

First of, your articles are about telco hardware, not smartphones software.

The german case basically boils down to Germany wanting independence in their critical infrastructure. At least officially this is so China can't affect them by for example stopping exports of repair components. Basically your source is clickbait but without the release. »German governments information security branch says no evidence of Huawei spying ... they say the boycott happened because of strategic resource independence in networking technology«

The space of classical newspaper articles is not in a good state, basically it's almost entirely propagandized to death. So you need to know your sources, please don't be the one throwing around a phys.org article on politics like it's credible information.

source on the Germany thing

I could clear up this case because I happen to know that "die Zeit" (German for "the Time") is one of the few remaining relatively independent sources for stuff relating to Germany (they are biased to follow German politics in coverage but not content, currently). I also track them closely for any changes to that status, basically if they fall to anyones propaganda, the first ones to bring that to light and point it out will be the opposing propaganda. Here is their article, for your translators pleasure:
https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2023-03/5g-ausbau-bundesregierung-verbot-huawei

⁤
your source kinda goes into that direction at the end at least

But some observers raised eyebrows at the BSI's apparent dismissal of cyber security risks concerning Huawei.

"I believe it's wrong to suggest that the concerns about Chinese espionage are unfounded and easy to detect," telecom security expert Ronja Kniep told AFP.

"Even if Huawei has no official relationship with the Chinese government, that doesn't mean Chinese services aren't using the company and its technology as vehicles for espionage."

All three of Germany's main mobile network operators use infrastructure provided by Huawei, Spiegel pointed out.

So apparently the opinion of "the BSI" here is wildly out of line with Germany's government's general opinion at the time.

but wait there's more

So apparently in Germany there is this "BSI-gate" of sorts, around the incompetence and potential Russian and Chinese relations of "Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Arne Schoenbohm" (as he is quoted in your source).
So either way this person was extremely untrustworthy in this matter here.

⁤

So now to the other source. Reuters is at least well known, and the article has an author, so that's nice.

I looked into the matter somewhat. Around the same date as your article, the BBC wrote

To monitor the company, the UK set up the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre, which comes under the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

In March 2019, it said it hadn't found evidence of malicious Chinese state activity, but it did identify some serious defects in Huawei's software engineering and cyber-security competence.

Seems they harshened their stance after US influence around 2020 to me too, but it's not like they where entirely unsuspicious before that influence either.

[+] [email protected] -11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Right so no evidence, just suspicion from the US was enough for them to harden their stance.

Your "rebuttals" doesn't change any facts on the ground.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Did you not listen? I started with saying that your evidence wasn't relevant to the matter at hand. This is about smartphones, not telco equipment.

Then I partially agreed with you on the uk case, and explained why your source on the german case was utter trash, and wrong.

There are no relevant facts for your original point on the ground, you didn't bring any and I showed why. You spent your time moving goalposts and bringing up new unrelated issues.

The current state of the discussion is:

the uk may have been influenced by the us to be harsher on huawei than need be
both germany and the uk had and have consensus on some suspicions against huawei
the suspicions in the uk where present before and got amplified after us action
those suspicions are multi-factored, some of which apply to us as individuals and some do not

Your original claim was:
Huawei is better than Google, fear of Huawei is solely cause by propaganda.

No arguments have been made yet, the discussion has gone nowhere because I was stuck refuting your side-projects.

If you wanna look at actual facts, see for example this comment I made to someone elses .
There I go into some issues with Huawei itself, and the relations of it to the chinese government, as well as indications that they are trying to hide those for image reasons. That is a fact-based source that the relations are real, that they are creating propaganda to hide that, and why they would do that. If you are looking for facts go look at that.

I do not refute that the US is propagandizing against Huawei, and that they are influencing other governments to follow their decisions against Huawei, and thus their media influence to be directed to defending that and propagandizing against Huawei too.
I agree that this is happening, and I highly dislike it.

Just because a side is using propaganda, doesn't mean they are wrong. Being careful we can filter out some facts, then filter those for what is relevant to us as consumers. And we end up with the result that Huawei smartphones are a privacy nightmare, basically any consumer tech with their software and internet access is, and should be avoided. Components and hardware by them is probably fine for now, so if are going to replace their software, or are gonna sandbox their devices, then to a consumer I see no reason not to buy from them (as opposed to governments, where there are valid reasons not to).

To summarize:

you can (should) be against Huawei based on facts alone
governments can ban Huawei for valid reasons
your sources and reading comprehension suck

[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

That's because the accusations and bans were on telco equipment. Hell, you can still buy Huawei phones on Amazon if you wanted to in the states. You don't seem to understand what all the propaganda hub bub was about to begin with.

*Edit:

I think you're completely misunderstanding my position. My position is Huawei is considered worse than google because of US propaganda. Not that Huawei is better than google. And that propaganda is not substantiated.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure that Huawei is considered worse because of US propaganda for everyone, or even most, but I can accept some.
I know a few people that certainly had their issues with them before I ever saw them even mentioned in the general media or online, before the propaganda we se now started.

In any case, if you say "that propaganda is not substantiated", then can you please elaborate what specific claims where made and are wrong? Because as propaganda does they use everything negative about something and then make up some more, so if it's all unsubstantiated wouldn't that mean Huawei is absolute good and has never done anything even slightly bad?

My claims are that:

Huawei collects users private information, that they have no business and no reason collecting
if the CCP asks, Huawei will comply
- in handing over user data
- in not shipping or threatening to not ship components for infrastructure for geopolitical reasons (the thing most countries claiming as their reason to ban Huawei from their infrastructure)
Huawei is not worker owned, though they claim to be (this ones new after the other discussion I linked above)

⁤
Some of my reasons for believing this are in this comment I linked above.

Outline your claims, or refute evidence for mine, or add evidence against mine

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I don't think we have differing opinions actually. I'm saying there have been many countries that have stated they do not see the stuff USA talks about to make it reasonable to ban. They all shut up and followed the US after 2020 and individuals even started to say Huawei is more evil than American companies. Again without any particular evidence.

Would I argue that Google and Huawei do similar and equally bad things, yes absolutely. I'm just tired of people attacking Huawei and saying they're worse than American corps. That's all I'm trying to say here.