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  • Showing only topics with the tag "privacy". Back to normal view
    1. Hidden third party telemetry found in Nokia 6.2, 7.2 smartphones

      Update 12/03/2020: this is not a telemetry, but a kill switch from Colombian carrier - confirmed by HMD. Kill switch will be removed from most devices soon. I updated an article and posted it...

      Update 12/03/2020: this is not a telemetry, but a kill switch from Colombian carrier - confirmed by HMD. Kill switch will be removed from most devices soon. I updated an article and posted it here.

      Original article below:

      I have recently purchased Nokia 6.2 and wanted to check if it sends any data somewhere, considering what happened with previous models

      First, I noticed approx. daily connection to dapi.hmdglobal.net
      This is a Google Cloud that could belong to a company behind Nokia - HMD Global.
      But the Privacy policy in my phone only speaks of "activation" process, not of daily diagnostics data.
      So I used developer tools to remove the following packages (warning: this may break your device, I am not responsible for any consequences)

          com.hmdglobal.enterprise.api
          com.qualcomm.qti.qms.service.telemetry
          com.qualcomm.qti.qmmi
          com.qualcomm.qti.qdma
      

      Before removing them, I used APK Extractor to save APK files just in case it breaks my phone and I may be able to attempt reinstall. This part comes into play later.
      The first was my blind guess about what exactly connects to dapi.hmdglobal.net
      The next 3 I found mentioned in various forums for other devices as "safe to remove", however, I have not seen any telemetry sent to Qualcomm or anywhere else, except what I mention next.

      After removing these packages, I noticed that there are some remaining unknown connections my device attempts several times per day.
      They are all done in same order, one right after the other:

          www.pppefa.com
          www.ppmxfa.com
          www.forcis.claro.com.co
      

      After some investigation, I found that the first two domains point to some Microsoft Cloud servers rented in US.
      The last one most probably belongs to Colombian telecom company, and this is where it becomes interesting.
      After many hours of fruitless removing of different apps in my attempt so stop it, I suddenly remembered something.
      When I used APK Extractor previously, there was an empty first line with some generic icon where an app icon should have been.
      I went there again and indeed, this is a hidden system app, that you can not see in the list of all apps in Settings, normally. But it turns out, you can see it in Data usage (after it successfully sends some data using your mobile connection).
      The name of the app is deliberately left empty to hide it, but if you click it in Data usage, you can see that this app is co.sitic.pp , which can receive SMS, can make calls, and has access to internet.
      As with all Android apps, you can reverse read the name to guess what it is.
      Turns out, http://sitic.com.co is a Colombian company, who "are leaders in innovation and create mobile and WEB applications for new products and services." (credit goes to Google Translate)

      screenshot of the app with permissions

      In other words, this app is a 3rd party telemetry, hidden from user, not mentioned in the Privacy policy, that has access to SMS.
      This looks very bad and I really hope this is a malware injected by factory and not something knowingly distributed by Nokia, HMD Global, the EU company.

      After removing the co.sitic.pp app, requests to Microsoft Cloud and Columbia stopped.
      I was later pointed to a German forum, where (I believe) it was first found in a Nokia 7.2 device.
      So, we have it confirmed in 2 devices in 2 different countries.

      On German forum they contacted Nokia (I assume support) but got tired exchanging emails for weeks without any result.
      On 02/03/2020 I have requested an official reply from Nokia and HMD Global via press.services@nokia.com and press@hmdglobal.com and waiting for reply.
      Since I am not a journalist, I may never get one.

      TLDR: 3rd party telemetry is found in Nokia 6.2 and 7.2 devices, is hidden from user, has access to SMS, and sends data to Microsoft Cloud in US and a server in Columbia.
      It is probably supplied by SITIC S.A.S., a Colombian company, and looks more like a malware than a telemetry.

      28 votes
    2. Changing e-mail and cleaning up my Internet presence

      I'm trying to clean up my internet presence and move away from at least Facebook and Google. I've come a long way with deleting my Facebook and it's now basically an empty shell for messaging....

      I'm trying to clean up my internet presence and move away from at least Facebook and Google. I've come a long way with deleting my Facebook and it's now basically an empty shell for messaging. I've installed Signal and will start the grooming process with my friends and family now. If you have some solid arguments for the change regular ol' folks can understand please share them with me because as we all know "privacy" just isn't enough.

      Next phase is the big one...Google or basically G-mail.

      1. Is there any way to get an complete overview of where you've used your e-mail for a service online?

      2. What e-mail would you recommend?
      2a. I'm OK with paying a bit for overall quality, security and equally important UX!
      2b. I don't use any other relevant Google products like Drive etc. It's just regular e-mail and sign in credentials for other services I basically need

      3. I use a Mac, iPhone and iCloud. Is iCloud a problem? IF this needs to change it HAS to be an "easy" switch and not like setting up a server for myself. Because it won't happen and I'm not skilled enough.

      I would very much appreciate your input :)

      EDIT: Thank you all for your thorough comments!

      22 votes
    3. Where do you draw the line when it comes to what data collection one can do on you?

      (Presuming it's done purely for statistical purposes of course.) I, like most of us am personally fine with age, sex, city level location and relationship status. I really dislike using real names...

      (Presuming it's done purely for statistical purposes of course.)

      I, like most of us am personally fine with age, sex, city level location and relationship status. I really dislike using real names though since I feel like it ties you to who you are in person, which I really dislike and I support people deciding not to fill them in because in some places even what I've outlined can get you in trouble.

      10 votes
    4. I'm planning to enable the "mark new comments" feature for everyone - any major concerns?

      Something that's come up in discussions a few times recently is how important it is to have good default settings. Even users who are quite technical and involved don't always explore which...

      Something that's come up in discussions a few times recently is how important it is to have good default settings. Even users who are quite technical and involved don't always explore which settings are available, and that's totally fine—they shouldn't need to. The default setup should be as good as possible, with changing settings mostly for specialized cases.

      One particular place on Tildes where this isn't currently being done well is for the "mark new comments" feature, which has always been disabled by default. I think it's one of the best features on the site and makes it much easier to follow ongoing discussions here than on other sites with similar comment systems, but overall, not many users have enabled it.

      For example, Tildes got some attention on Hacker News again yesterday, and about 80 new users have registered so far from that. Only 9 of them enabled "mark new comments", even though the welcome message strongly encourages it. Looking at longer periods of time, this seems typical: only about 10% of users ever enable it.

      As it says on the settings page for the feature, my reason for disabling it by default was out of privacy concerns. However, I've been doing some review of the data that Tildes stores lately and realized that this was kind of misleading and inaccurate. Because I have HTTP request server logs and some other related data (which is all only kept for 30 days), I effectively have topic visit records from the last 30 days for all users anyway, whether they have the feature enabled or not. The data is more convenient to access for users with the feature enabled, but it's available either way.

      Because of that, and because the data will be very useful to combine with some of the upcoming changes I mentioned in the last ~tildes.official post, I'm planning to enable this feature for everyone. Here are the general plans:

      • Data about which topics' comments pages a user visits will be stored (for 30 days), along with when and how many comments were there at the time. This enables displaying which topics have new comments since your last visit, and marking those new comments.
      • There will no longer be a setting to disable this, but you can still choose whether previously-seen comments are collapsed when you return - the same as the existing checkbox on that page for "Collapse old comments when I return to a topic".
      • I will probably implement some sort of "stop informing me of new comments in this topic" feature (separate from the new Ignore one) to stop having the info about new comments in a topic showing up for you.

      Please let me know if you have any thoughts or concerns about this. If nothing major comes up, I intend to make this change later this week.

      82 votes