Technology

I hate Temu, but this (apparently contracted?) Grizzly Reports report isn't really all that trust inspiring, tbh.

Our experts identified a stack of software functions that are completely inappropriate to and dangerous

The stack difference to the Amazon app they list:

• Package compile
• Requesting system logs
• Some code obfuscation
• Mac address collection
• Install permission
• Wake lock

Meh. That's just a sliver worse than your regular, off the shelves proprietary corporate app. I don't see how they can pull off the promise of being a truly dynamic Android app from that report.

I do believe they hover up data, but they aren't otherworldly super hackers. They will probably just ask for the data and the users will hand it over in a second. For most people, it really is that simple.

Can someone explain to me how you can just simply program something to bypass privacy and security features? What is the point of having these features if you can literally just program something to ignore them? Like....??? Temu is obviously bad if this is true, but if it IS true, it shouldn't have been possible to begin with!!

Comments here: “Yeah right, I’ll believe it when they explain how.”

Article: literally has a section explaining how

Edit:

Replies: "Yeah, but that's just a summary. I'll believe it when they explain in full detail."

Article: literally has a link to the detailed explanation

Have any of you actually ever stopped to process what the tagline, "I'm shopping like a billionaire" means?

I've always interpreted it as,

I'm needlessly buying things that don't make me happy, but making the purchase without any hesitation, knowing that the purchase price could never financially impact me in any real way. When I purchase the thing, I'll probably never use it or actually take it out of the box even. It is just empty, hollow. And somewhere inside, I always know that it's all only possible, because I'm actively exploiting the cheap labor of scores of other people that are made to perpetually suffer in generations of abject poverty to allow for my relative comfort...

🎶*"I'm shopping like a billionaire!"*🎶

I'm shocked, I say. Shocked!
The idea of an app being used to gather additional dat~~e~~a from a customer!

Also fuck their landfillware Chinesium "products".

Yesterday, I saw a Temu ad for something and I just wanted to open it to read the info and there were so many popups and "spin the wheel for a prize" and "enter your email here" and so on that I gave up and just looked for the info elsewhere. Never clicking on a Temu link again.

How about pass and enforce strong digital privacy protection laws you fucking cowards. When other countries spy on us it's scary and bad, but for US companies? Best we can do is ban porn and demand backdoors to stop E2EE messaging.

"Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users," Griffin's complaint said. "Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place."

That's just nuts

All I want to know is what do these Temu people think my life is like?

I'm sure Temu collects all information you put into the app and your behaviour in it, but this guy is making some very bold claims about things that just aren't possible unless Temu is packing some serious 0-days.

For example he says the app is collecting your fingerprint data. How would that even happen? Apps don't have access to fingerprint data, because the operating system just reports to the app "a valid fingerprint was scanned" or "an unknown fingerprint was scanned", and the actual fingerprint never goes anywhere. Is Temu doing an undetected root/jailbreak, then installing custom drivers for the fingerprint sensor to change how it works?

And this is just one claim. It's just full of bullshit. To do everything listed there it would have to do multiple major exploits that are on state-actor level and wouldn't be wasted on such trivial purpose. Because now that's it's "revealed", Google and Apple would patch them immediately.

But there is nothing to patch, because most of the claims here are just bullshit, with no technical proof whatsoever.

Like a worse AliExpress

The irony

I can't believe anyone would buy from Temu. I knew they were Chinese knockoff bullshit the second I saw their first obnoxious ad.

Not enough just to get someone else to take your cheap plastic shit to landfill after it's cluttered their space then I guess.

Temu is absolute cancer in terms of business practices so no surprise here at all.