this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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What kind of shitty apps are you installing? Some of the most popular mobile games in the world are Chinese (Genshin, Honkai, Azurlane, Ark Knights, etc) and none of them do any of this shit.
I went to China recently with a buddy and I loaded a ton of China specific apps onto our phones. Mine was a Samsung and his was an iPhone. Between WeChat, Alipay, Taobao, Amap, DiDi, Dianping, the China Customs Service app and a bunch of other store and region specific apps, literally none of them did anything you described. I also bought a Xiaomi phone in China and migrated all my data over, so I can confirm that these apps don't do anything like that even on a Chinese phone (which, btw, is way more strict with permissions than my Samsung, down to telling me each and every time google maps requested my location).
In addition to that, I have a bunch of apps for stuff from Chinese companies on my phone like Mijia, Fiio, Huawei, Moondrop, etc and none of them do this shit either.
WeChat, taobao, alipay, amap they all do this. Go to watch /pictures on your android with a file manager. You will notice some folders called .gs0 .gs3 and so on.
Inside there are dummy images with tracking data. They do like this because apps on Android don't need an extra permission to drop "images" on /pictures
Those folders are not shown by default because normal file managers on Android hide any file with the name that starts with a dot.
And those dummy images aren't shown in photo galleries also because of another file that's dropped in those folders, .nomedia
You also never saw the ads on the taobao splash screen???? Did you ever opened that app? Not to mention that phone permission is mandatory to use that app for some reason. (And can't do any search until you register your phone number with SMS verification)
Other Chinese apps with ads on the splash screen is Huawei store, mijia, amap
And the Chinese customs app also requires an insane amount of permissions, never gave my European phone number, but a week after entering the country I got a phone call from +8621962110 - who gave them the number? (Don't know what that call was about because answering a phone call in roaming is 2 euro per minute, but from some search on Baidu it looks like it's some robocall from the Chinese police)
I just tried this with both my Xiaomi and my Samsung using both first party and third party file managers. Xiaomi showed 3 .gsX folders despite it being absolutely full of Chinese apps that I loaded on. Samsung with the same method had zero.
Why are all Chinese apps like this?
and the situation drastically improved since android 10, before they created dozens of directories because they pretended full memory access
those .gsx directories contains "images" that are just tracking data. For example taobao drops a "picture" in /pictures/.gs9/ccdcwdc that contains your unique tracking id. Alipay then using the same aliyun sdk accesses that "picture" and can match the user activity between the two apps.
Just because now is "just three folders" does not make it better. They're still exploiting android sandboxing with the intent of tracking the user activity without consent
All three gsX folders were empty by the way, and that doesn't explain why the samsung was squeaky clean. By your own admission this is no longer the case on newer versions of the apps and android, so you should at the very least go back and edit your post to put it into past tense.
Also, your assertion was that all Chinese apps are similar, so 3 out of dozens makes your statement demonstrably false.
did you use the apps or just install them? Of course they're empty if you just installed them.
i repeat the statement, all chinese apps are similar, look for example mijia and meidi smart home, they're basically identical, like "there's only one way to make a smart home app"
I use dozens of chinese apps and i can totally distinguish immediately when the dev is chinese.
I didn't say it's no longer the case in the newer version of the apps. It's mitigated on newer versions of android, because they're exploiting the OS in order to trace users, which should not happen.
I used all of them because I got my new phone a few days into the trip and used it for the remaining week or so I was there. I'm still using Chinese apps on a daily basis now, so why are they all empty?
Let's talk about your other claims as well. Irrelevant permissions? Zero. Ads on boot? Hardly everything since most of the utility apps don't have ads at all.
All American apps are similar. Look for example Twitter and Threads, they're basically identical, like "there's only one way to make a social media platform"
Well I'm sorry my digital caliper sense isn't as developed as yours. I'll strive to be better.
Maybe the folders are empty because your Xiaomi has the "cleaner" app. Did you ever wonder why only Chinese phones have "cleaner" apps? Because the situation in the country is widely abused.
You repeat that taobao or Huawei app store don't have ads on the splash screen. This means you never actually used those apps.
The way you're defending those coding practices is really weird. I notice now your username. Now I understand. It's not that because the ruling party has a nostalgic symbol in their logo (but it's as capitalist as the usa, without health insurance you're fucked), the apps made in that country are automatically good and perfect.
Again. Explain the Samsung not having a single hidden folder under the same circumstances. Is it because Samsung had a "cleaner" function too? Is the situation in South Korea widely abused top? Most Android phones have cleaning and self maintenance functions. Google's Files app has a similar cleaning function. Has the problem spread to the US?!
No, those store apps are store apps. Of course they're going to try to sell you shit. When I open my Amazon app the first thing it does is show me shit I might want to buy. Is Besos Chinese now too? When did this happen?
Your ridiculous claim is that all Chinese apps are similar. Therefore they all show ads on boot. My onus of proof is discharged when I show even one single Chinese app with no ads on boot, which is a lot of them.
Oh that's weird, tell me about how Chinese people are fucked without health insurance when there's universal health insurance?
I'm not defending any coding practices because there's no such thing as a "Chinese coding practice" to defend. You started off saying that there were at least 3 verifiable things that all Chinese apps do, and now you're down to "look, there's a general vibe from apps from China".
The cleaner feature in Google files is nowhere as sophisticated, it just cleans the cache, while the Chinese cleaners download a definition file to know which files are to be removed and which not.
As for Samsung, I don't know, remember that the apps are dropping that fake images as a security exploit without having explicit permission to do that. Maybe Samsung is blocking that exploit.
Regarding health coverage, it definitely depends on the employer, if you are unemployed and didn't pay the optional premium, you won't be cured as well. In other capitalist European countries you would be cured the same way for free no matter if you are homeless, unemployed or a billionaire. I lived several months in Beijing and I never saw an ambulance on the streets. Asked around, I always got the same response "ambulance too expensive, we go hospital by taxi". Seems weird that a "communist" country doesn't share resources with the comrades.
Or it's actually just some benign thing because you haven't posted any evidence which says that the .gsX files are even malicious or caused by Chinese apps. I've been googling for it and haven't found any serious documentation about it. A reddit post linking it with Hotels.com (American company, lmao) and an LTT thread linking it to Ladaza (a Filipino app). In the absence of more and better proof, I'm not even convinced that it's an exploit.
And again. You claimed that ALL Chinese apps ask for IMEI permissions. No proof of that either. It's all just made up horse shit to justify your vibes based racism about how Chinese people can't code.
None of this is consistent with the link I provided so it's your word and anecdote against the professionally prepared page and its supporting citations.
PS read this: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-05/03/content_25014998.htm
A meter to calculate how much you need to pay for a life saving vehicle is something you would expect in the USA, not in a "communist" country. Where is the standard of equality between all the citizens if only the rich can afford to get to the hospital? Isn't this capitalism? For reference, the article mentions 3600 yuan the shandong woman had to pay to transport her father to the hospital equals to 2 months of salary.
It's not that they can't code, it's that they're coding in isolation. They don't have experience in using Android apps designed for foreign countries because they're literally blocked to do so. They see all apps are spyware in disguise and think it's totally ok to do so.
It's not a coincidence that Google play banned pinduoduo because it used forbidden ways to track users. Or the DJI app, banned from Google play too.
This policy only hurt themselves and it's undeniable. Like that time Tencent accidentally included literal malware in an iOS app because a dev downloaded an infected version of xcode from a random Chinese website instead of apple.com (accessing any website hosted outside the country is super slow)
I'm glad someone else sees this problem. Thanks for writing it out.
It is true that there are some pretty impressive apps made in China. Genshin impact is honestly some kind of black magic, how they made it so well optimized for mobile. That tends to be the exception though, not the rule.