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Why should I be wary of my browsing data being sent to China? (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/asklemmy

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi all,

I don’t really know how to ask this question. On one of my devices, I downloaded a web browser (Opera) and one of my friends made fun of me, saying that “you better like China knowing all the stuff you do online”.

I read the Opera website and it says it’s a Norwegian company, but on Wikipedia it does say it was bought by a Chinese company.

My question is: what does “China” do with my personal browsing data? Why is it useful for them? (and who are we referring to here, is that the Chinese government, a private company, who?)

I’m looking forward to learn more about digital privacy, but I don’t currently understand the “obviousness” of how it is wrong to use Opera.

I’m a tech enthusiast (hence why I’m here), but I’m cognizant that I have large knowledge gaps in some of these topics.

Thank you in advance.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Opera specifically is owned by a loan shark company; avoid that shit even if you're a member of the CCP itself.

Why would you not want your data to be sold in general? Because it'd lead to your internet experience being less private. Companies can buy your data to give you targeted content while you're browsing the internet and it could influence you all sorts of ways from giving you the idea to buy a product, to showing you a specific political candidate's propaganda during elections; which does literally influence another country.