- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.world
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Yesterday, I saw a Temu ad for something and I just wanted to open it to read the info and there were so many popups and “spin the wheel for a prize” and “enter your email here” and so on that I gave up and just looked for the info elsewhere. Never clicking on a Temu link again.
one of the best decisions you’ll ever make, next to dns level blocking it on your network.
I get their CAPTCHA where I have to slide the puzzle piece over to look at one of their ads. More than half the time I will do this and it will fail saying I didn’t do it right. So yeah temu has become a trash site.
"So yeah temu has become a trash site. "
That CAPTCHA isn’t specific to Temu.
Same, but a year ago.
Also, Temu has tried to take all the shopping search results from Bing/DDG. So those results are trash now.
“Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users,” Griffin’s complaint said. “Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place.”
That’s just nuts
This is why companies like Apple are at least a tiny bit correct when they go on about app security and limiting code execution. The fact it aligns with their creed of controlling all of the technology they sell makes the whole debate a mess, though. And it does not excuse shitty behavior on their part.
But damn
And if they got this past Apple in their platforms. That’s even wilder.
The article linked to the analysis and on a quick glance, it seems to be done entirely against the Android variant of the app. This makes sense because if the alleged actions are true, they’d never have gotten on to the App Store for iOS Apple users… or at least as of a couple months ago. Who knows what kind of vulnerability is exposed by Apple only doing limited cursory checks for 3rd party App Stores.
Shits getting scarier by the day.
deleted by creator
- Dynamic compilation using runtime.exec(). A cryptically named function in the source code calls for “package compile”, using runtime.exec(). This means a new program is created by the app itself.—Compiling is the process of creating a computer executable from a human-readable code. The executable created by this function is not visible to security scans before or during installation of the app, or even with elaborate penetration testing. Therefore, TEMU’s app could have passed all the tests for approval into Google’s Play Store, despite having an open door built in for an unbounded use of exploitative methods. The local compilation even allows the software to make use of other data on the device that itself could have been created dynamically and with information from TEMU’s servers.
Ah yes, delete your original incorrect comment instead of continuing the discussion about how wrong and lazy it was to make, nice.
Also fuck their landfillware Chinesium “products”.
That’s also most of what’s on Amazon these days.
Amazon is just faster shipped temu garbage
Every person I’ve heard hate on temu shops on amazon, too. It’s pretty ironic.
If it’s $5 and some random assortments of letters for a brand name you might as well just light your money on fire whether you order from temu or amazon or Walmart for that matter
I mean, some things are just fine when they are the cheapest?
Can someone explain to me how you can just simply program something to bypass privacy and security features? What is the point of having these features if you can literally just program something to ignore them? Like…??? Temu is obviously bad if this is true, but if it IS true, it shouldn’t have been possible to begin with!!
Im not sure how they specifically bypass the features in other ways but I imagine some of it is from users accepting permissions under the guise of another use. For example, maybe you accept the microphone permission on tik tok to record video. With that permission in theory the app could now use it maliciously. Of course it should all depend on the users choice for that and im not sure beyond the scope of that.
TORfdot0 shared this comment below:
Someone else posted this report in this thread which does a good job of the deceptive practices and API calls the app uses to trick the user into giving permissions up willingly and otherwise collect data it shouldn’t.
By exploiting unknown vulnerabilities in the operating system.
Looking forward to someone answering this
one of the most obvious ways is to simply not bypass them, and then do it from within the application itself. That way you can essentially man in the middle the rest of it, though this would require a rather specific set of events and a particularly nested design of an app.
Same like wish
Have they ever heard of faceberg or sundar the creep?
Temu is absolute cancer in terms of business practices so no surprise here at all.
But it’s cheap.
Cheap cancer
If I wanted garbage I could get it for free from the roadside
Why is Temu so popular then?
Because people get dopamine from shopping, even if it’s garbage. It causes enormous amounts of waste, because most of the crap isn’t used much if at all. They just make it look good on the product page.
…and it’s cheap.
Cancer in terms of, well, everything.
Shocked i tell you. I am shocked.
No way an app would collect data it doesnt need. Preposterous.
Next thing you’ll tell me is that tiktok is doing the same thing!
What about Meta and Google?
Them too, but lukewarm by comparison.
Why do you say that?
Emphasis on by comparison, as in “molten hot metal is cooler than the surface of the sun, by comparison”.
TikTok and Temu actively have code in them that would be considered a virus in other contexts. They exploit your system to gain more access than they should, violating the point of sandboxed access.
By comparison Meta and Google merely take advantage of user ignorance and apathy by making opting out frustrating - but still technically doable.
Both practices are terrible, but that’s not the same as saying they’re equally bad.
Cause they are owned by American billionaires and as such are more ethical. /s
Like Tim Apple, iPodJockey?
I was given this nickname by an old guy at work that knew I was good with computers. Never actually owned an ipod lol.
Erm, WhatsApp would suggest otherwise.
WhatsApp was the vector for zero click access to a target’s phone from Israel’s weapons grade hacking Pegasus toolkit. They would send a video call, typically in the middle of the night, and with no input from the used they’d get full access. My personal belief is that they used functionality WhatsApp itself uses to access user data.
There was also an encrypted phone called ANOM, which had this trick calculator app with a hidden encrypted messager. “Made for criminals, by criminals”. Except, when the guy started his business he got investment from the FBI and Australian Federal Police to pay for the servers and some of the phones themselves. Basically every time it sent an encrypted message it sent a separate encrypted message to the ANOM servers. It’s entirely possible (perhaps even likely) that WhatsApp would do this also.
As for Google, they’re truly insidious. Lots of banks now require you to connect to Google captcha servers - they don’t give you the pictures, it’s just the back end, basically the tracking parts. Then there’s the controversy about them collecting location data when users have said no. They absolutely do collect data they shouldn’t.
I’ll accept that maybe I’m giving Google a pass because of misplaced nostalgia, and while I personally have never used or liked
MetaFacebook, I’ll concede that for a while it provided a service some people valued.It’s still my opinion that Google and Facebook have a large percentage of engineers that personally try to make them a genuinely good service, at least moreso than compared to TikTok and Temu. But I’m willing to concede it’s not as much a practical difference as I would like.
It’s still my opinion that Google and Facebook have a large percentage of engineers that personally try to make them a genuinely good service
Most of those people were sacked long ago. Today’s menu for those that remained is shareholder maximum value extraction sausage fest
it doesn’t count when it’s an american company doing it
How about pass and enforce strong digital privacy protection laws you fucking cowards. When other countries spy on us it’s scary and bad, but for US companies? Best we can do is ban porn and demand backdoors to stop E2EE messaging.
I’m pretty sure Temu is Chinese.
Unfortunately they care more about spying on us themselves.
That would hurt the advertising, spam, blackmail, malware, and propaganda industries. We can’t rip out the economic spine of big tech since they pay the best bribes.
California (and a few other states) are trying. The CCPA and CPRA are a good step in the right direction. If you’re a California resident, you can request all the data a business has collected about you, tell them to stop sharing it with business partners, or tell them to completely delete it, similar to the GDPR in Europe.
Oh don’t worry, they’re going to try and kill that too before it hurts them too much, and with the audacity of calling it the “American Privacy Rights Act”. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/eff-opposes-american-privacy-rights-act
Ugh. I hate this so much.
Have any of you actually ever stopped to process what the tagline, “I’m shopping like a billionaire” means?
I’ve always interpreted it as,
I’m needlessly buying things that don’t make me happy, but making the purchase without any hesitation, knowing that the purchase price could never financially impact me in any real way. When I purchase the thing, I’ll probably never use it or actually take it out of the box even. It is just empty, hollow. And somewhere inside, I always know that it’s all only possible, because I’m actively exploiting the cheap labor of scores of other people that are made to perpetually suffer in generations of abject poverty to allow for my relative comfort…
🎶*“I’m shopping like a billionaire!”*🎶
I think you cracked the case on that one, that’s gotta be what it means.
My interpretation of that tagline is that since the prices on Temu are cheap, it means you can shop as if you had a lot of money, without actually spending that much.
I am disabled and have limited income I don’t have control over increasing or decreasing. I use temu to save a lot of money on essential things that should be cheap but are still overpriced in America. Sponges. Rags. Soaps. Pens. Tools. Home improvement hardware. Plant grow supplies. Gifts for me nieces. The tagline, is just a tagline. Billionaires are not like me and scouring for cheap magic sponges.
Edit: also, temu did not invent drop shipping. Shopping on amazon is literally the same thing.
Good to know people that are disabled don’t mind using shitty maleware apps, I guess?
What’s your point combining using the malware app with you being disabled? Is that supposed to make the app better somehow?
You’re not special because you’re disabled. Things you use aren’t magical amazing. You’re still the same as everyone else.
That’s… not what they were saying? They were responding to a comment saying it encourages consumerism by saying that they use it for better prices on things they need regardless
What does being disabled have to do it?
That’s why they’re broke
I generally think arstechnica.com does a decent job of being a non-garbage news site. I pay a couple bucks a month for the ad-free RSS feed. This story feels terrible to me. I don’t doubt a law suit has been filed, but I would expect some investigation by the reporter of the extra-ordinary claims of privilege escape the application is claimed to be capable of.
Given that the headline says that it is a claim in a lawsuit, and the lawsuit is by a state attorney general and not some random nobody, I feel like they are being fairly reasonable.
I would feel that it would be a reasonable if it was my local paper running the story. Arstechnica IS a primarily technical news site—I believe they should have a higher bar—otherwise they are just parroting a report and not providing useful (to me) news.
Yes because AG’s from repub states never ever file frivolous lawsuits that suit their own agenda.
Friendly reminder to ,check out Friendly Social Browser to get all these apps in a better experience and secure/private context
But if you install the app you get a free Bluetooth speaker!!
/Joking. Am I the only one who gets that ad constantly whenever I’m using a device that isn’t running ad blocks?
Not enough just to get someone else to take your cheap plastic shit to landfill after it’s cluttered their space then I guess.
I can’t believe anyone would buy from Temu. I knew they were Chinese knockoff bullshit the second I saw their first obnoxious ad.
Plenty of items on eBay are just people who buy from China directly and mark up prices. If it is likely made in China and I don’t want it quickly, I’ll buy off aliexpress. That said, alibaba wanted me to upload photo ID which I noped out of. Temu started spamming my email address when I’d never used them. The unsubscribe link went to their website said to adjust your account settings if you didn’t want spam… I never created and account and avoided them completely following that.
I don’t buy anything from eBay that I can get elsewhere. I didn’t even use those other sites. Sure, everything is made in China, but I’m good not trusting China without a more reputable middleman that’s subject to American laws regarding things like refunds and such.
Shit, most of Amazon is that as well.
Seems like >70% of seller have the imprint in china or hong kong
Amazon is usually OK if you buy things that are sold by Amazon or sold by the manufacturer (if it’s a well-known brand). The third-party sellers on Amazon based in China are almost always reselling stuff from Aliexpress/Alibaba with a significant markup.
Half of them aren’t in China though. It’s dropshippers, so you still get your cheap death traps, but you get them in a few days, Amazon get their enormous cut, and they get to take no responsibility when it burns your house down.
That’s why I said “sold by Amazon”. The drop shippers are all third-parties. Instead of the item saying “Sold by Amazon”, it’ll say something like “Sold by [some third party] and fulfilled by Amazon”.
Stuff sold by Amazon themselves is generally okay, since they’re directly responsible for it (no third party they can blame for any issues).
I try to avoid Amazon where possible though. B&H is pretty good for electronics, and I know I’m not going to get cheap Chinese knockoffs when I search their online store.
somethings people don’t care about quality. An example, the one time I checked out Temu way back when it first made its splash I bought some targets for shooting… Hard to fuck that up and got em cheap as fuck with that promo deal they do to hook you. Uninstalled it right after, probably not worth it but I feel like that is a common experience. There are items where you just simply can’t fuck up so the ultra cheapness works out.
With that said, an obligatory FUCK temu and those like it.
Aliexpress seems most straightforward, and not quite as gimmicky.
Have you seen the wheel spin and Fomo coupons?
Maybe not as much but still highly gimmicky in comparison to normal e-commerce sitesThey don’t seem to give overall preference to a given supplier beyond their obvious coupons and paid rankings. Alibaba is better, but who needs 144 of any specific widget…?
If you compare to one of the most preferred e-commerce website, which I would consider Amazon, it’s still not that bad. I have found less lies on Ali express v Amazon. If it comes to any cheaper electronics the Ali description is the real deal as far as I have seen. Amazon I have been shipped differing products, the description or features have just been a lie, or it didn’t come with the things implied. For the most part Ali descriptions are exactly what you will expect when opening the product… in fact many times I discover extra features when receiving the product that seemingly just couldn’t explain in their marketing.
Ali>Aliexpress>Amazon… just depends on needs
My only reasons to buy on Ali is when I need something simple like velcro that can be cut to length or other small scale stuff electronics (e.g. Rasperry Pi 0) and it doesnt have to be fast.
Ironically the shipping is either free or so cheap it’s better than domestic amazon.
I often suspect they sell the same item but order it with DHL shipping (our domestic shipper) with high priority shipping included in the price (2€ item + 8€ shipping = 10€ on Amazon + “free” shipping)
With how cheap they are, people will and should buy from TEMU. Aliexpress as a general store never had much of a competition for English speakers outside of Banggood for select electronics. Taoboa is good but it’s harder to use
So for you, the lowest price is the only thing that matters? It doesn’t matter whether it’s a shitty product? Or that they’re one of the least efficient shippers due to their tariff avoidance strategy, and in doing so are contributing more per purchase to climate change than even companies like Amazon and Walmart?
Dunno how it’s with Ali but doesnt Temu also use forced labor?
I’m assuming you don’t own a smartphone, because many of those materials are extracted by exploiting the local populace in Africa
I’m happy because it’s competition for Aliexpress.
Arguments against carbon emissions and carbon footprints against corporations isn’t very helpful unless you can do something about it. This is somehow a very unpopular opinion here, for some reason people don’t like being told that they don’t have much power. Boycotting it by yourself won’t work either, because even if the west gives up on it, the East will not. Carbon emissions will remain unless strict regulations are maintained, and we know who buys politicians these days. If I can do nothing about the climate, then yes I’d rather pay less. And I’m not explicitly anti-China like some people here because America is just as hypocritical.
Yes there are really bad products and their QC is horrible. I’ll say the same for Aliexpress, Taobao, Amazon, Walmart and Bestbuy. Unfortunately for everyone here, we’re going to have to choose between shit options, so yes I’d rather pay less if it’s shit I’m going to get anyway. Besides, I’m smart enough to not make bigger purchases on these sites because I know of their QC situation.
Yes there are really bad products and their QC is horrible. I’ll say the same for Aliexpress, Taobao, Amazon, Walmart and Bestbuy.
There’s a huge difference between some 5/10 products at Walmart and Best Buy and the best case being a 5/10 product with the majority being 2/10 and some being actually dangerous like Temu.
They’re not remotely similar.
Depends on what you buy. You shouldn’t be buying PSUs or TVs or something of the sort from there, but try finding cheap clothes, accessories, electronics like that on Amazon
You shouldn’t be buying anything from there.
Those cheap clothes would be overpriced at free.
And where am I getting such cheap clothes if I don’t have a thrift store near me? I’d happily take them for free.
And clothes are just one part of it, which I don’t really purchase that often (I mentioned them because I bought a few boxers to wear around the house but that’s it)
Boycotting is a collective action, it spreads like a virus, so you are wrong on its effectiveness.
You sound like someone who wants hand waive away the real costs of their actions by saying there’s nothing you can do to change things.
I hope the people who read your post aren’t demotivated to effect change because of it.
What I do not understand is why people are biased against certain companies in such a discussion. If your arguments are correct, then Amazon is a horrendous beast that should have been killed by now with “viral boycotting”. And here we are. Is anyone demotivated by knowing that people still buy from Amazon and make them billions? Why all the hate against TEMU specifically, when they’re trying to undercut Amazon and other stores? Let’s not pretend that Amazon and Best Buy and Walmart are a collective bunch of saints and can mean no harm. Where is the action in this case?
Let me speak the bitter truth for you: the majority of the population here is American, with an inherent anti-chinese mentality when it comes to capitalistic ventures/operations. That is the reason for the hate. Alibaba faced the same issues, and in case someone wants to bring up Huawei for their actions, remember that AT&T runs an NSA spy-mission in Manhattan. Where is the outcry in this case?
I might have veered off-topic, but bad QC and cheap deals aren’t inherently a Chinese thing. Hence, I do not follow the propaganda against Chinese shops who are beating American companies at their own game.
Edit: since I’ve been called guilty of waiving away untoward actions, please enlighten me on how the general American population has stayed “responsible” and managed to put any dent in other non-Chinese companies that have their ethics in the dumpster and actively harm the environment and people (I’m looking at you Nestle, Spotify and OpenAI)
I’m anticonsumption in general and temu just seems like the epitome of paying for disposable garbage.
In general i don’t understand why people are buying any nonessential items at all. Everyone is apparently too poor but random crap still sells. I splurged and bought a cheap tablet to use as an ereader this year but only because i can’t justify the expense of buying books and my local library is awful.
Well, at least you’re consistent with your views. Being anti-consumption is a fine stand. In my case, I usually go to these sites for cheap deals on microcontrollers, tit-bits like USB adapters, metal stands, IEM cables etc. I’m not buying expensive/essential stuff from them.
I can’t force people to do the things I think they should. Noone can. People draw inspiration from all sorts of things. Like you right now seem inspired to protect China from racist western policies.
I dont pretend to speak for my country, or its government, but I can do two things:
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Walk the walk, if you believe something then follow it. Examples: de-googling, disengaging with social media, following a vegan lifestyle, research companies before giving them your money.
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Talking about all of this stuff in public places. With my family, coworkers, or here on Lemmy, anything we say has the potential to inspire someone to change. You never know what will be the thing that triggers change, but for all the things I listed above I had someone share that information with me in a public forum, which caused me to change.
I’m sure we can argue the efficacy of this strategy all day, and even some of the examples you gave like Amazon are no longer the behemoth they used to be.
After coming back from a break, I realised I might have leaned too hard into “protecting Chinese companies”. I will say this right now for everyone reading: I have no love for the nationality of said companies. I don’t care if Aliexpress or a clone of theirs was Chinese, Korean, Brazilian, Swiss, Russian, Iranian, Australian or Japanese (incidentally I spend time on buyee.jp because the cheap deals on CDs sometimes). What I care about is providing competition to the bigger mammoths here. If I find a USB adapter for a quarter of the price with free shipping and refunds from a Chinese shop with a decent reputation (Aliexpress, Banggood, TaoBao and now TEMU), I’ll take it. I hope this forces big American retailers to maybe give better, fairer prices to their customers.
I’m not quite convinced that Amazon is no longer the giant with worms as we knew it. Can you explain?
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I can’t believe people pay full price on cheap stuff. The only reasonable thing to do is pay cheap on cheap stuff. And the delivery times are unbeatable .
I can’t believe people buy cheap trash that would be sold on Temu.
But here we are, people buy cheap ass trash off Temu. If China started picking through the trash we shipped them and sold it back to us on a site like Temu, something tells me people would still buy it.
People would buy an actual turd on temu if it’s cheap enough. Just read these comments here… But it’s cheap. Congrats, you bought cheap garbage and it got send around the globe by a company that sells your data
That’s all online shopping
Isn’t that the site that’s AliExpress but worse?
Apparently for some people (my mom) the search or filters work better on Temu. No idea why, I only ever use AliExpress.
Alis search is really bad.
Somehow the auto translation is active for the product names but if you search they don’t seem to apply.
For example:
Searching for Cherry MX switches brings up articles that are named “Mechanische Kirsch Schalter für Tastatur” (essentially the name but translated). Problem is: Cherry the company is like it’s in english as well, also the fruit amd thus will not be translated correctly.
Trying to search more niche stuff quickly gets annoying when trying to find something specific.Ok, that’s fair. I just use the english terms anyways and usually also change the interface language to english.
A huge amount of products are just generic Chinese products that have a brand slapped on it. If you’ve ever bought a random small USB device (i.e USB hubs, etc) from a major brand like LogiTech and others, if you crack it open it is just the same device as cheap resellers with a branded coating. It’s not worth it to many companies to bother manufacturing their own small tat so they just sub-contract out.
And sure, it likely works, but it’s the exact same hardware with the same capabilities as a product a 10th of the price.
The cheap Chinese stuff often uses knock-off ICs tho.
They can be fairly difficult to detect, and will work for a short time or under very light loads. But they will be nowhere near the spec of the data sheets.
They might massively overheat, not provide the correct currents or voltages, run at lower speeds. All sorts of corners being cut to turn a $2 IC into a 50¢ IC. Or a 50¢ ic into a 5¢ oneSo yeh, might be the same PCB layout inside, it might visually look the same (or very very close) but the parts are likely to be counterfeit.
Of course, it’s also probable that name brands might be hit with counterfeit parts inside as well. Hopefully their QA picks that up
I’ve found this when trying to get a decent USB>9-pin Serial connector.
You think it’s your software, or something weird going wrong. Then you swap over a name-brand adapter, and the thing just works.
Maybe not Logitech as a whole but small scale or low-end stuff
Yeah, the small tat items and accessories, as I said.
