The Taiwanese government has warned that Chinese mobile phone apps pose serious risks to users' cybersecurity, including excessive collection and sending of personal data to servers in China.
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Taiwan's National Security Bureau (NSB) conducted random inspections of five Chinese-origin apps widely used by Taiwanese citizens – rednote, Weibo, TikTok, WeChat and Baidu Cloud . All of the apps showed serious deficiencies in terms of data security and privacy protection
"The results indicate the existence of security problems, such as excessive data collection and privacy violations. The public is advised to be particularly careful when choosing mobile phone applications," the NSB warned in a statement on July 2.
The apps were evaluated based on 15 indicators in five categories – personal data collection, excessive permission use, information extraction and access to biometric data.
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All five apps were found to be sending data packets to servers located in China. The National Security Bureau (NSB) said that this type of transmission puts Taiwanese citizens' data at risk, as there is a possibility of misuse by third parties, including Chinese intelligence and security agencies.
Several other countries, including the UK, Canada, the US, and the European Union, have raised concerns about the data-sharing practices of Chinese-owned apps, particularly TikTok. This has led to the TikTok app from government devices in many countries.
There are suspicions that the Chinese government has used or plans to use this data for espionage.
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In 2024, the US Congress passed a law banning TikTok from operating nationwide unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divested itself of ownership of the app. However, the ban has yet to go into effect, as US President Donald Trump has given ByteDance several extensions to find a buyer.
Source: infosecurity-magazine
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