Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Keyboard spyware? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

71 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was taking a look at the Naomi Wu situation (A Chinese DIY tech youtuber who went missing after being watched by the government) and in one part they mentioned that she was concerned about her privacy, so started using Signal, but had a default chinese keyboard that had a keylogger and the police had looked into what she was talking on there.

I'm not sure if it was a mobile only thing, but it was mentioned that the keyboard app was used in like 70% por chinese smarthphones.

Now, I use AnySoftKey and refuse to use default keyboard apps, but how far can we reach on the keyboard security thing? Is typing on a computer or using a physical keyboard on a mobile device 100% safe? I think the keyboard issue is often overlooked and would like to know what recommendations your have? Or what should be known more?

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I used to use Gboard with a firewall that isolates the app so that it can never connect to the internet. Though that was in the past and I'm not sure if that is even effective. So I just switched to a open source keyboard in FDroid

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Removing network permissions from the keyboard! I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned this. Great idea

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

This sentence kinda highlights how outlandishly dystopic the whole thing is.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Yeah, I used RethinkDNS's Firewall. It's pretty good.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Apps can communicate with each other even without Internet access, this mean GBoard could just connect to Google Play Services or any other Google User/System App and share the data over that way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

This will 100% still share everything you type with Google