8 in 10 Europeans don’t trust US, Chinese firms with data
https://www.politico.eu/article/8-in-10-europeans-dont-trust-us-chinese-firms-with-data/Open linkView original on reddthat.com898
Comments144https://www.politico.eu/article/8-in-10-europeans-dont-trust-us-chinese-firms-with-data/Open linkView original on reddthat.com
Good lord, what’s wrong with the other two?
They over-consumed the goods from those countries and they lost their minds.
One of them is probably steam lol.
Fascists.
You can trust meeeeeeeee! What's your first pets maiden name?
I just asked it. It's "Woof".
Weird, my pet said the same. Is your password also
*************?No, mine is
*****************, but I honestly like yours better.GayGoatFuckerhas a special ring to it that*****************doesn't have.I think this is the right mentality to have.
Data isn't very valuable if you can't transmit it.
At some point you need to trust someone
To be fair, I don't trust European companies with it either. As the saying goes: "Where there's a trough, there will be pigs." Want to keep your data safe? Keep it.
Yes, bit wary of these current trends that try to paint Europe as this holier than thou place where everyone only thinks about the polar bears and UBI, when the truth is we have plenty of capitalist sharks in our ranks that would be happy burning it all down for the next quarterly results.
To be fair, we have the GDPR in Europe, which puts people at ease. However, this could be weakened or rid of entirely in order for the EU to become more "competitive" some day. Even the climate change goals of the EU has already been weakened so that we could catch up to the AI race. As sad as it is, it's just the realpolitik influencing decisions.
The EU keeps coming within inches of voting for making secure encryption impossible. Chat Control would have been worse for privacy than anything the US has.
Don't pretend like Chat Control is ever going to get through.
Each time they are going to vote it down, it gets retracted and changed slightly so they can try again. And every time it gets voted down again.
Politicians know that they would get out-voted in the next election if they go through with it.
Iirc they just passed something that enforced the opposite to chat control to stop the constant reintroduction of the same over reaching law
And every year new open mass surveillance worse than the UK and US attempts to be passed and barely fails.
GDPR also doesn't mean shit if it is barely enforced against large companies or the fines aren't revenue-proportional.. Then it is just a cost of doing business.
Let me assure you that in the large companies I've worked with, GDPR is taken very seriously.
Unless you’re Facebook or any other social media giant. GDPR is just an minor tax on their profit.
Don't kid yourselves. Once Europe develops its own big tech, it's going to be just as untrustworthy. But at least it will be your untrustworthy.
For now, the EU has strong data protection laws that the US and China don't have. Although it is true that stupid ideas like Chat Control keep popping up every couple of years.
Ideally, though, you put them in countries close to the EU but not part of it, like Switzerland.
Data control laws to prevent the sale of data not the government use of data.
governments often buy data instead of obtaining the necessary warrants, because its easier and more effective. if they can't buy it, they have to do it the harder way, and the harder way can be made even harder with legislation
The us isn’t fond of other countries spying on you either. The state has not relinquished any amount of power or control in my lifetime. Europe caring about privacy is a facade.
Its one step better at least
Boy do I have some news for you. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
https://youtu.be/Kw96Qh0-rs0 (Gotta use auto-subs)
That's only the excuse the politicians are using. In reality there's a combination of intelligence services and datamining operations pushing for scanning ordinary law-abiding citizens communications.
I honestly feel safer with my data in a foreign authorities hands than domestic.
China can't do dick to me nor should they want to. I'm just a lil guy! The US does nasty things to its citizens on the reg, I don't wanna be caught up in that!
I'd like to think they'd be more accommodating.
"Ahhh Mr. Albatross, we've seen your social media traffic and we've been expecting you! In anticipation of your arrival, we've prepared some lovely poop, if you would just step this way..."
Or America, who will reject your Visa for having a meme of JD Vance on your phone
they can do plenty enough to be worried. maybe they can not harm you physically (for now), but by having access to details of the private lives of people, their conversations, and being able to see how they form their opinions, they can use that information to determine how can they reshape public opinion on topics of their interests. this information can be used by themselves, or they can pass it to an ally, and it could be used to change almost anything, like interfere with elections, or further erode the need for privacy so that people are willingly giving up even more data to them
Cool story
Europe tech often times are open source with commercial service.
At least it's better than whatever Google, Microsoft, or Tencent.
Honestly, I prefer someone else's untrustworthy.
I don't trust China at all, but I trust them over the US, if only because they have no stake in me as a foreigner.
Yet... they play the long game.
They are all in on renewables. The US want everyone on oil and coal, the US wants the junky to keep and dependency.
We are the bad guys.
I don't really see how that is relevant. Or how a country's energy sources alone can determine whether they are "good" or "bad".
It is an example of China being stable and the US being unreasonable and evil.
I don't think it's anything more than short-term versus long-term thinking.
I would not describe either country as "good", but that has nothing to do with the above statement.
The us focusing exclusively on the short term is what I like consider evil, and the stability of a long term-term focus is good.
If we’re being real I don’t really trust anyone with my data.
Don't trust anyone, not even yourself.
Full time ass job to keep up with every single security bulletin.
Sounds exhausting.
Leaves you utterly pooped.
What's an ass job? Like, butt stuff?
Yes. It's a shit job. But it's honest work
Send it to me. I'll keep it safe. I promise not to share it.
Still a better deal than what all big tech firms offer.
One year later: I'm changing the conditions of my promise.
Still better. You'll have to promise to share with 180 partners from the get go just to be close to the same level as them. And then do some chicanery.
I live in the US and I dont trust US companies with my data either. They either sell it or are handled by easily exploitable systems developed offshore in India.
So, in that sense I do not trust the US, China, India, or Russia with my data and avoid software developed in any of these places when feasibly possible.
Even FOSS software? The Linux Foundation's headquartered in the US.
I do get the rationale, but honestly you could just change that to "proprietary software" and you'd have more options with just as much data security.
Are you giving data to the Linux Foundation?
He clearly says "with my data"?
Yeah, I just send a copy of my medical records to them through email
Man, that's a pretty limited app list.
Joke is on you, I trust no one with my data.
Me neither, not even myself.
I forgot my own name. Can somebody tell me where my home is?
Try Google it, I’m sure they’ll know.
As an American, I also don’t trust the US firms with my data.
I don't trust anyone with my data. Regardless of their nationality.
Me either, but I also have zero faith in Europe to guard human rights. There are no good guys here.
I don't trust politico with my news articles
I dont trust the US with my data ... or anything. This place is run by literal idiots and/or criminals.
Elon Musk is the middle of that Venn Diagram.
4/5 of the people i know in the US don't trust the US.
You can make that 6/7 (my wife and I).
6 7
You might not, but I do 🤷
Good, also don't trust european firms either, don't trust any corporations with your data.
It's amazing how many people cheer for corporations. There's few consistents in the world but a big one is corporations are not your friend.
I'm American and don't trust U.S. firms with data.
To be clear, I also don't trust Chinese firms.
I don't trust my own government, and have no reason to trust anyone else at this point, let alone for profit companies. It's bleak.
I use DeepSeek, because I feel it is less nefarious.
But > 9/10 Europeans use whastapp / messenger for daily basis.
Lumo shoutout!
I'd say that are a looooot more 😒
Yup, probably like >99%
Probably more in the realm of 99.999%. Without exaggeration. Some countries even use WhatsApp for government shit.
So sad, why would anyone freely use WA at all. People use tech without the slightest critique. Pure consumers....
Watching all the new laws spew out in Europe I don't trust them, either.
I'm down to Romania and Iceland, now.
Been dumping German stuff like a plague lately, and already pulled all data out of Canada.
I have one thing in Amsterdam, but their laws have been getting worse and worse, and they're... Nine, I think it is, eyes which is bad for trusting them with your data. Even Switzerland is getting sus af.
At this point how does anyone trust anyone with their data?
good, I don't either and I live here.
Lol who trusts any firm with their data?
20% of Europeans
Seems like 2 out of 10 Europeans need to get their head checked.
American here, I don't trust US firms with data
I trust they are selling my data to make money, even when I ask them not to.
I trust that they'll be complete push-overs when it comes to law enforcement and agency data requests without a warrant.
Outside of moving data overseas, away from 5/9-eyes, I'm having a bad time figuring out how to obtain cryptographic control over my data within existing services. This leaves me to just upload crypto blobs everywhere with no real services to support it, or buying my own hardware and co-locating it myself.
The Chinese can do less harm with my data than the US and it's allies.
For now.
The problem is that once it's out there, you can't take it back.
Of course.
Personally I have given up on that. I try to either use false information when they don't need the real data or throwaway" emails and SEPA and one time credit card numbers for banking stuff.
I don't trust any company with my data ever, so I'm constantly paranoid in a way.
Okay but what's the risk if the cccp will find out I can't write a fucking yaml for the life of me?
They can hold it against you if they take over whatever country you are from.
Your job chip implant will make you a delivery boy instead of a programmer.
Never gonna happen
Let me put things this way: after my last AliExpress purchase I was targetted for the first time in my life by a PayPal fishing phone call from India (starting with a pre-recorded message in my native language but then switching to some guy speaking English with an Indian accent).
Somebody I know has been targetted twice by "you package is awaiting at customs" phishing messages after making purchases at AliExpress.
Maybe coincidence, maybe AliExpress is having their trade payment processing ops outsourced to somebody that sells it to people that will use it to fraudulently pass themselves as a natural entity involved in the purchase process (like PayPal or the destination country's Customs) or maybe AliExpress themselves sell that data. Judging by the amount of outright fraudulent sales claims there (the capacity of any power storage devices is at times hilarious, as is the output wattage of solar panels and storage capacity of external SSDs), my bet is the latter, though if it's not that totally not giving a shit about the risk of the second possibility is almost a certainty.
That kind of "why should I care" bullshit you're peddling is exactly the same kind of bullshit that was peddled a decade and a half ago about having one's e-mail with Google, and look at were we are now.
Unless you're stupidly isolated from it (not even giving them your e-mail), you're going to leak stuff that can be used against you, even if only by criminals (and the authorities in China couldn't give a rat's arse about their people swindling or stealing from laowai).
Like in the US, it's going to be "Free Enterprise" abusing data about even if the local authorities don't really care about you.
The real question is why did you give your phone number to AlliExpress?
Secondly, why answer an unknown number?
It's used by the delivery people to contact me if they can't find the delivery place or I'm not there. Also some of the local delivery companies will, for more expensive things, send the recipient an SMS with a code that you then give to the delivery person so that they know for sure they're delivering to the right person (or somebody authorized by them).
It's actually a pretty good way to solve a lot of problems with delivery, but it does mean I need to have a mobile phone number which ends up in the hands of at least two entities.
You should just contact the carrier to give them your number after the order is placed. Preferably you could just include your actual number as instructions for the delivery driver (if they have that. ) Doing that cuts out even more middle men and your number isn't officially logged.
That would require for me to know which carrier would be doing the final leg of the delivery when the package is in my country, which often I don't and over time there's even new carriers popping up.
A much simpler solution is to have a second mobile number which I give out for these things which is actually quite easy since I can just use a Pay As You Go SIM.
Might be worth changing the number AliExpress has on archive for me, though by now if the sold or leaked that info, it can't be undone.
In this case, you use common sense and be suspicious of anyone with a foreign accent making unsolicited phone calls…especially those with Indian accents. The ones you should look out for are the scams that involve AI spoofing a family member’s voice.
The less info about you is out there, the less handles they have to pass themselves for those who can legitimatelly ask money from you or which control access to your money, be they family, friends, your bank, the government and so on.
They can't spoof a family member's voice if they don't know who is your family or have access to samples of their voice - both things often obtainable via Facebook and would also be obtainable via a Chinese equivalent one might be tempted to use instead.
Anyways, my point is that Chinese companies are inherently no more trustworthy than American ones, they're just not as bad yet because they don't yet have the same access to masses and masses of personal information for people all over the World - once they do, they'll be just as bad because regulations in China are also shit and they don't give a damn about foreigners.
I'm currently in the process of degoogling. There's a lot to consider.
Congratulations, you’ve come to your senses.
It can be tough to do, I finally just got off Google photos backing up my pictures and videos maybe 2 weeks ago.
I already had them also being sent to my PC with resilio sync, but since I moved to Linux I didn't have backblaze anymore (B2 is too expensive for me and their "unlimited" cloud backup is mac and windows only) and didn't know of any affordable alternatives so I wasn't willing to drop my only cloud backup even if it's Google.
Eventually I canceled the annual storage plan and said "I'll figure it out by then", didn't figure it out, found jottacloud after that and am now using that.
I despise the US from the bottom of my heart, and I am a big China fan, and yet at the same time I don't want anyone to handle our data. We need data sovereignty. Our data stays here and that's it. Not in the US. Not in China. Not anywhere else.
I don't even trust my own PC with my data.
I don't even trust myself with my data.
I don't even trust my data.
I don't even trust
I don't trust any firm
Why on earth would we!? China especially don't have the best track record, and the US is the laughing stock of the world at this point, not to trusted with anything.
Definitely, and "data" is just a single bullet point on the list lol
It'd be like going to a quack doctor and saying "No way am I letting you operate on my brain! ...open heart surgery? Yeah, that's fine" lol
I only trust math with my data (i.e. encryption...)
How many of those 8 are doing anything, ANYTHING, about it though?
I also don't trust us with our data.
Self-plagiarizing:
Coincidentally(TM), Polish trust nearly triples over more "Western" countries, which shows that this clearly isn't a representative sample of Europeans – definitely not enough to claim "8 in 10 Europeans". (Politico actually changed the headline from earlier which didn't claim this.)
Well... Given that the average person neither knows what data they are effectively giving US and Chinese companies, nor does anything against it, this poll is asking the wrong questions. Massive amounts of data collected for every single individual via ad-based surveillance (US) and IOT devices phoning home (China) is the reality we live in today. But the average person does not know about it and therefore can't even grasp what is done to them. They don't trust them, but they hand over the data anyway. This is basically a poll amongst cows in the slaughterhouse.
How about, if your data can be compromised, it's not safe anywhere?
I trust Chinese firms more than American ones....
If I'm going to ask for ai help because I don't know how to do basic coding, I'm asking deepseek instead of clammy sam Altman bot
I trust that Chinese Firms won't directly lead to my door being kicked in by ICE.
That is more than I can say about American firms.
This applies only if you're american. Which is a small part of the world.
Outside Cuba which part of the world are you more concerned with China kicking in the door instead of ICE.
Chinese firms are more worthy of your trust than american ones, but its still not a positive number.
I can unterstand that but it still sound like copeing to me.
It is definitely a 'there is bad guy so alternative to bad guy is good guy' without understanding what kind of setting theure talking about sorta problem.
True
Or straight up tribalism. Which is nope.
TIL I’m European.
Even more they don't trust china...
Yeah I wouldn't lol
How many out of ten Europeans use Meta or TikTok?
You can use something and still not trust something.
What point are you trying to make?
I can spell it out for you:
People recognize the problem, but don't take appropriate action.
I mean, this was my first question as well. If you say "I don't trust that guy with my kids," then you also should not be leaving that person alone with your kids. If you do leave him alone with your kids, people aren't wrong to say that you very much are trusting him with them.
So I think it's legitimate to ask whether they mean they "don't trust Chinese and US firms with their data" in the sense that they do not provide their data to them, or just in the sense that they do give them a bunch of data, and then feel misgivings about it.
Which, y'know, it's something you have a limited degree of control over, certainly, and we don't want to fall too much into blaming the victims. But as someone who didn't manage to actually get off Facebook until last year, I definitely felt for a long while before that like I was complicit in my own exploitation, and contributing to a societal problem. I think even the people still there know that cancelling it is the low-hanging fruit in terms of reducing the amount of data in the hands of dubious firms.
Used Meta once it was still caled Facebook and even then i did lose interest a few year after i made the account. Well and Tiktok as i first saw it all i thought that it was a desiese and it should be burned.
Hmmm… 🤔
(I know alternatives, especially “truly” European are pretty much not existent, those 8 europeans still could’ve chosen one that’s respects their data a bit more than Google does if they don’t trust them I feel like)
Hmmm... 🤔
People hate inconvenience more than they hate their data being mined.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-hated-country
I do trust Chinese a lot more than muricans. And don't use any american product (to my current knowledge).
I don't trust Europeans with anything. I've lived there twice. The tyranny of the majority will destroy Europe very soon.
Typical US citizen, butting into a conversation that isn't even about you. We're talking about global matters, not your backwater shithole.