So is the consensus here that we care about privacy and treat every threat seriously or when it comes to anything involving China or our favorite company we make excuses and ignore any alarm bells?<p>Privacy should be a serious concern for everyone and this should be taken seriously.
Smartphones shouldn't silently send private data into the cloud without asking the user first.
I for one would rather back up the data to my own server or locally instead.
Taiwan investigating Xiaomi too : <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/technology/taiwan-investigates-xiaomi-of-china-over-cybersecurity-concerns.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/technology/taiwan-investig...</a>.<p>Xiaomi is moving its servers out of China to address such concerns : <a href="http://www.financialexpress.com/news/xiaomi-shifts-user-data-out-of-china-on-privacy-concerns/1301603" rel="nofollow">http://www.financialexpress.com/news/xiaomi-shifts-user-data...</a>
I don't see how the picture is different for Android and iPhones. With Dropbox having former NSA Condoleezza Rice and Google's shaky privacy policies, I see a similar theme.<p>I think the point here is that India and China have a neutral relationship at best and India doesn't want military leaks. India and the US are on relatively friendly terms.<p>All things considered, I wouldn't blame anyone on being paranoid over sharing info with Beijing. Totalitarian government, iron curtain and serious lack of freedom of expression all work against its favor.<p>Ya. I wouldn't trust Beijing with any of my beeswax. Same way I distrust Pyongyang.
I guess the paper doesn't appreciate the irony of all their ad trackers on that page trying to send data about who read the article to 'mysterious IP addresses in India' :-)<p>The non-story is everyone with an internet property, or an internet interaction device, is trying to collect data about you because selling that is more valuable than the money you are willing to pay for the phone.<p>A useful story would be "new phone maker FooAmi is successfully selling phones for $200 more than their competitors because they explicitly prevent others from using them as tracking devices." That would be where consumers actually paid money for a phone or device that didn't make up its cost in data sales.<p>The thing I struggle with is that it seems most people just don't care, and I have convinced myself that it isn't because they don't understand what is being said, they just don't care. And that makes me profoundly sad when I think about it too much.
This is essentially the mobile application security question discussed yesterday @ <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8504136" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8504136</a> and has nothing to do with China.
This is really a step backwards for most users. Before users had everything automatically backed up by the cloud. Now they would have to have a more complex on boarding process where they will probably skip some advanced technical option they have no clue about. I don't use Xiaomi devices, but cloud support on other platforms has been great for me. I never make manual backups and yet it is irrelevant to me if I lose a laptop, have it stolen, swap phones, whatever because everything just automatically comes back thanks to the cloud. Except for some banking authentication I only keep in my head, I have no privacy concerns anyway, so all these nutsos holding back cloud from the masses are actually a big detractor to the platform for me.