Microsoft recently confirmed that the company is in talks with TikTok for acquiring its business in the United States. It also confirmed that the company is aiming to close the deal by 15th September, as mandated by the U.S. government.

Now, it seems that the issue isn’t just related to TikTok and the United States is planning to take action against other applications. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that action will be taken against WeChat and “countless” Chinese software companies.

He said that action will be taken against Chinese companies that pose a national security threat to America. However, it’s noteworthy that the United States has not yet provided any substantial proof of security-related issues by Chinese apps in question.

In an interview with Fox News, Mike Pompeo said: “These Chinese software companies doing business with the United States, whether it’s TikTok or WeChat, there are countless more … are feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party their national security apparatus. It could be their facial recognition pattern, it could be information about their residence, their phone numbers, their friends who they’re connected to… Those are the issues President Trump’s made clear we’re going to take care of. He will take action in the coming days with respect to a broad array of national security risks that are presented by software connected to the Chinese Communist Party.”

TikTok has repeatedly denied that it could be used by the Chinese government as the company’s U.S. user data is already stored on US-based servers and backed up in Singapore, so it is not subject to Chinese law.

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If the acquisition deal goes through, then Microsoft says that it would ensure that all private data of TikTok’s American users will remain in the U.S. After the acquisition, Microsoft will own and operate the short view social media platform in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

However, Microsoft has added that there was no certainty that a deal would be reached. It is being reported that ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming and investors of the company are reluctant to sell the U.S. business.

The United States isn’t the only country that is threatening action against the Chinese applications citing privacy and security risks. Recently, India banned TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps as tensions regarding the India-China border dispute rises.

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In recent Android builds, the operating system has offered its users an improved degree of control over what resources or areas an application has access to. However, this system is still abused by many applications that do not require many of the permissions they require to operate. Now, a Chinese developer’s apps have been labeled as ‘Spyware’ from a research team that suspects that 100 million Android users have already been affected.

The research team is from VPNpro that claimed that the developer behind the app also has at least 50 million installs and its apps request “dangerous permissions.” Notably, VPNpro also claimed that one of their apps also has a malicious remote access trojan hidden within it. These applications were found in Google’s Play Store and were made from a Chinese developer and its local subsidiaries. Reportedly, this practice has been seen before with developers hiding behind a network of different subsidiaries.

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The Chinese developer behind the abuse was the Hangzhou-based QuVideo Inc. It is best known for its popular video editing app, VivaVideo. This application is extremely popular since it offers its services for free, with the Play Store showing 100 million installs. VivaVideo is also one of the 40 Chinese apps that have been listed as ‘malicious-ware’ or ‘spyware’ by the Indian government back in 2017.

The apps from QuVideo are available on Apple’s iOS as well. However, due to the permissions system and boundaries being different, the abuse of a similar nature isn’t present on that platform. So, those that have these applications are warned to check what permissions you are granting the app.

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(Via)

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Big data has become the new oil of big tech companies across the globe as these giant corporations try to better understand the customer. However, recent big controversial incidents of data theft privacy breach with some high-profile companies have also opened the eyes of users. This is more so the case in China where consumers are becoming wary of the loose rules and guidelines that protect their private data. A new study conducted by the China Consumers Association revealed today that many popular Chinese apps collect an alarming amount of personal data.

According to the study, 100 apps were reviewed out of which 91 apps were found to be involved in the practice. The personal data that these applications collected included user location, contact lists and even mobile numbers on the user’s smartphone. Amongst the most notable apps that were reviewed from the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store included Alipay from Ant Financial Services, popular photo-editing app Meitu, bike-sharing platform Ofo and even messaging apps like QQ and WeChat from Tencent Holdings.

The matter is even more serious for other small-scale apps revealed the study. “The problem [of excessive data harvesting] is especially severe among smaller app providers, which have no privacy clauses or provide unreasonable terms.” said the report.

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The report comes as tech companies are scaling up their efforts to harvest data which will be used for Artificial Intelligence initiatives in 2019. However, the general populace has become quite aware due to high-profile cases that came into public view this year. In early 2018, China’s three big tech giants – Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent were questioned over their data harvesting practices in Mainland.

(via)

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Smartphone is currently a distinct trend among gadget lovers today. And, of all places, China is the largest smartphone market in the world. Unfortunately, application developers contribute in the use of smart phones do not get a large portion of profits.

At least that is what is said by the CEO of China Mobile, Xu Long in a statement. He said that at least there are only 13.7 percent of application developers who managed to obtain profits.

Unfortunately, Xu did not specify where the data was obtained. But he said that the data was obtained from an investigation by one source. Furthermore, Xu said that the phenomenon shows that China should continue to seek a better mobile market model for all parties.

However, Xu said the company remains optimistic about the positive trend of the mobile market. And, with the continued positive development, not rule if the portion of profits earned by the Chinese application developers will increase.

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