Smartphones With Popular Qualcomm Chip Secretly Share Private Information With US Chip-Maker

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During our security research we found that smart phones with Qualcomm chip secretly send personal data to Qualcomm. This data is sent without user consent, unencrypted, and even when using a Google-free Android distribution. This is possible because the Qualcomm chipset itself sends the data, circumventing any potential Android operating system setting and protection mechanisms. Affected smart phones are Sony Xperia XA2 and likely the Fairphone and many more Android phones which use popular Qualcomm chips.

Can there be privacy if data is so valuable in this economic system to do e.g. marketing? Will more privacy laws fix it? Or is another incentive in the economic system needed? Not endless growth of consumption, but maybe a steady state economy like a resource based economy?

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We need another economic system, like a Resource-Based Economy.

Developers will have no motivation to collect such amounts personal data, and if they do, they will be socially penalized[1] by the community, and the service will suffer its demise.

In the current system, large tech companies are “defended[2]” by the free market, so that they can continue to do their highly unethical business. Privacy laws will be ineffective.

  1. Lose trust ↩︎

  2. The free market protects highly profitable companies ↩︎

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