eBay Halts Sales of Chinese "Spyware Phone" Star 9500

The issue goes a bit deeper than rooting your phone as there are also suspicions of back doors built into the hardware itself (low level code in the Chips which run beneath the firmware).

Unfortunately the chips (which are finalised in China) are also used at the Mobile phone mast, the Mobile providers computer systems, on the switches at the PSTN exchange, ISP routers, in the call Recipients phone etc etc etc so this is a bit of a problem.

Lenovo are already (unofficially) banned from all sensitive systems within intelligence agencies of the WW2 Circle of trust (UK, US, Canada , Australia) www.theverge.com...

Also the UK government is currently looking for a way to reverse the fact that 98% of the UK's communications infrastructure is rooted through Huawei devices: Source www.bbc.co.uk... (founder of Huwai is a former senior Chinese intelligence officer LOL).

a reply to: Kandinsky

Old habit from my days with s.o.g I change passwords daily on the few sites I use online .. and never conduct business on line .. prefer shopping the old fashioned way at the times need something more often trade/barter for what need if need something.

The guy who makes my roms is an android developer and far more paranoid than I am and knows his business well ..

a reply to: Jukiodone

This is very true. One can only be so safe when it comes to electronics. Without j-tagging a device the hard coded info can't be touched on some internal chips, and even then I'm not sure if you could actually control everything. Just have to do what you can and just roll the dice on the rest.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6

...or USA wants to ensure people avoid using phones the NSA doesn't have full control over, and will be lambasting any phone not manufactured by their "partners" at Apple, Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola. Also likely the reason the feds outlawed jailbreaking/rooting your phone from those manufacturers last year.

Valid point. Its time to manufacture "Independent Phones".

a reply to: Skyfloating

Theres a company in spain that has started developing one .. saw it over on one of the mobile tech forums that browse couple years ago .. trying to recall which forum saw it on as theres a couple that browse ..

^ If you have the means to manufacture your own mobile phone (including all components from scratch which is a massive/almost impossible undertaking), I would guess at least 1 or 2 people in your organization would need to have some sort of domestic Government intelligence contact therefore mass manufactured devices cannot be trusted from any country...ever.

It really is as simple as that.

Over on the HP super processor thread they demonstrate the means to process massive amounts of data; simply assume everything you send/receive electronically could be used in the future against you by a yet unapparent fully draconian state.

I can see it now:

ATS User XXXXXXX sentenced for the crime of disseminating nihilism on a public network (crime detected 2034, crime committed 2014!)

a reply to: Expat888

There is a company here in Spain called I-Joy that's making phones, but they still use chinese components.. Mediatek chips etc.

a reply to: gortex

One of my coworkers is always buying smartphones off of eBay, all the darn time! She goes through them like no ones business, it's actually kind of bizarre.

She may have purchased this one, as she was just going on and on about how it looks like a galaxy but is way cheaper and like 3 days later it took a crap. The phone looks exactly like the one in the OP image. I'm going to show her this article, and if she did indeed buy that phone, I won't be surprised.

Just to add another interesting tidbit for those who use voice commands on their smartphone, I was checking out processes on my phone the other day, and came across one called Vlingo. Turns out it is a voice to text app that is part of the voice commands on my Galaxy S2. Apparently it is another very naughty little program that sends loads of personal data to it's servers. Read this article for more info.

ETA. According to the article, even if you don't use voice commands, this nasty little bugger sends all your personal data to it's servers something like every 4 minutes....

a reply to: Flatcoat

Great I've got a Galaxy S2
Upgrade time next month though