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cybercitizen4 @lemm.ee

Why should I be wary of my browsing data being sent to China?

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.

35 comments

  • China has state-coordinated schemes to both suppress its own internal population (which may not concern you if you aren't Chinese and never go to China) and to manipulate people globally (which everyone should be concerned about).

    While it's true that all countries collect data for the purposes of propaganda, China does so at a scale and with a level of precision and control that pretty much no other country can reach.

    You should be trying to limit the amount of data that ANY group gets about you, but some groups will do more nefarious things with it than others. Google for example just wants to advertise to you. Which is bad, I'm not trying to downplay that, just contextualize it. China wants to control every aspect of everything you do. China's capacity to control people outside its own borders is limited, but growing. The more data China gets, the more leverage it has to manipulate, coerce, and control.

    • We are all too easy to manipulate.

      The more data they have on us, the easier it is.

      • If they control the browser they can potentially intercept everything you see and do. Banking info, whether you looked up Tianmen square, who you talk to, who you trust... They can also infer personality from your browsing history. Looked at clown outfits just before watching porn? Maybe you'll get a letter blackmailing you or else they'll divulge your fetish to your family and loved ones. This is not fiction - China has been caught doing this to political personalities, and those are only the ones that failed.

        The browser can also serve as a gateway for them to install persistent monitoring software on your OS, or turning your machine into part of a botnet.

      • They can correlate that information with your other browsing habits and start to form a picture about the sort of person who shares your interests, regardless of how bizarre those might be.

        It's not an exact science because everyone is different, but once they have that picture they can start pushing the buttons of one person like and derive some conclusions about how the rest of that cohort, including you, will react.

        They don't even have to be successful all of the time. Just more than would be expected from random chance.

        A stone in the right place can divert the mightiest of rivers.

      • I think concerns about China in specific are overblown.
        That being said, what we've learned about the topic from US tracking programs (slight chuckle at China having scope or abilities beyond anyone else in that regard) is that all information can be fed into what is essentially a statistical model of interests, behaviors, expressed opinions, and contacts.
        From that, you can determine a few things that are specifically "useful".

        The first useful thing is the ability to tell if someone's behavior has changed in an unexpected way. If someone starts talking to someone new via text message and they "shouldn't" know each other (no common acquaintances, never at the same place at the same time, no shared interests) you have an anomaly that can be processed further.

        The next useful thing is once you have this model of expected behavior you can start modeling stuff like "A talked to B, B to C and then C changed behavior. A talked to D and D talked to E, and E changed behavior", and more or less direct chains.
        This effectively tells you that A is influencing the behaviors of C and D. By tracking how influence (and money and stuff) flows through a network of people, you can extrapolate things like leadership, communication pathways, and material support pipelines. If you're the US, you can then send a seal team to shoot someone.

        If you're, supposedly, anyone doing this you can more selectively target people for influence based on the reach that it'll have, use your models to target them better, and generally improve the quality of your attempted influence.

        I personally have my doubts it's being used that way because it's just as effective and far cheaper to hire a public opinion research group to pay a significant sample of people $5 to figure out how to make better propaganda, and then like 75¢ each to get Facebook to target the right people.
        It's really only valuable if you eventually care about an individual. Most unfortunate privacy violations are aggregates.

        Even if it's not directly actionable or a threat, you should still be wary about letting your browsing habits leak because the information can much more plausibly be used for phishing purposes.
        If you just bought some clown outfits and get an email about your clown plants being held at customs you're a lot more likely to click to figure out what's going on.

    • China has state-coordinated schemes to both suppress its own internal population (which may not concern you if you aren’t Chinese and never go to China) and to manipulate people globally (which everyone should be concerned about).

      While it’s true that all countries collect data for the purposes of propaganda, China does so at a scale and with a level of precision and control that pretty much no other country can reach.

      Is there any actual evidence that the Chinese state spends more money or man-hours attempting to collect, analyze, and manipulate public opinion than - say - The NSA? Or, for that matter, Google AdSense?

      You should be trying to limit the amount of data that ANY group gets about you, but some groups will do more nefarious things with it than others. Google for example just wants to advertise to you.

      Firstly, isn't that the entire threat that this data analysis presents? A malicious actor wants to accrue enough information about you such that they know exactly what to say in order to manipulate your behaviors and beliefs. That's advertising in a nutshell.

      Secondly, why is the threat of a domestic advertiser somehow less existential than that of a foreign one? Does Sundar Pichai have more of my best interests at heart than Zhang Yiming purely by proximity? Or is this purely a "Chinese people think evil, American people think good, its just in our natures" thing?

      Thirdly, if Chinese investment in American technology is such an existential threat to our freedom of thought and rational action, why is the American military industrial complex so glacially slow in their response? You want me to believe that the Chinese government is brainwashing Americans en mass with their evil TikToks, and we've got proof, but we still want to let them keep doing it until November (squarely in the middle of election season) before they're forced to divest or stop serving content?

      This all just strikes me as xenophobic hysteria, especially given the blaise attitude towards domestic advertisers (oil companies lying about climate change, crypto shills lying about their financial risks, Joe Rogan/Alex Jones types pushing phony nutrition supplements, political mega-donors lying about one another's platforms, outright scammers just trying to fleece you).

  • So this isn't a compelling argument because it sounds outlandish and the implications (while serious) are indirect

    Every major power, and some companies, have population simulations. It's not that hard to build one - we've been using them for decades, and they start yielding useful results even when they're pretty simple. Individuals are complex, but populations can be boiled down with statistics pretty easily

    Let's say I want to increase stochastic violence in America. I rate the traits of as many people as I can across as many useful criteria as I can measure. I could then tweak an algorithm to show something I think would radicalize people to a test group, and measure again. I then take what I learned, and polish my approach until I'm ready to go live

    You can do this to whatever end you like - and browsing habits can only tell a human so much, but this is what big data does. It finds associations humans wouldn't see through math

    This probably sounds like I'm wearing a tin foil hat, but this is a real thing. This is how foreign election interference works - astroturfing blindly only does so much, and modeling a population isn't difficult (depending on what you're trying to do)

    Now as for browsing habits - like location data or Facebook friends, with enough data points you can find out things about a person they don't know themselves. It may or may not make sense to a human, but big data is all about finding associations through blind math.

    If you provide a set of data points, you contribute. It may or may not influence you, but either way it improves the ability to influence those around you.

    I don't know how much opera collects, I don't know how much of that data is exfiltrated to China. I know I don't want anyone to have too much of that data, but I also have to live my life.

    It's a matter of harm reduction - educate yourself on your choices, listen to people who dive deeper than you're willing to, and do what you can to make the most ethical choice based on where you are right now. There's no perfect choice

35 comments