Data security of erotic photos in Chinese mobile phones and smart sex toys

What does an ordinary person have on their mobile or laptop

According to data protection experts, the average person does not have to worry about Chinese mobile phones. The Chinese government is not interested in your note and time of picking up your children from kindergarten, spending on apples and meat and a photo from the trip. But that's only half the truth.

On a mobile phone or PC, an ordinary person has erotic photos and films with a partner on a regular basis. Passwords to personal and business services that can be used commercially. Email communications regarding client cases. Most of us have passwords to banking and confirmation of card and bank payments on our mobile phones. Through the publication of erotic photos, business information and compromised finances, even ordinary people with no news potential are being blackmailed. You can gain intelligence potential in the future without knowing it now.

In other words, The security risks of mobile phones are high even for the ordinary person.

Chinese mobile phone in particular at risk, but also American Iphone

Why Chinese mobile phones in particular are risky is well known. The Chinese government has always had full remote data access to Chinese mobiles from Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Nubia and many others through the so-called backdoor and absolute data control. Although the manufacturers concerned deny it in marketing terms, the truth is simply public knowledge and the situation cannot even be described as an open secret. This is a pure reality that is not up for debate. That is why Chinese mobile phones are also reasonably banned for some government and local government workers. This is not a sentence directed against China, but against manufacturers with objectively poor data protection.

But basically, it's every mobile phone with lower legislative privacy protections. In theory, that would mean all cell phones from non-democratic country manufacturers. Practically, in the Czech Republic and in the world, it means Chinese mobile phones, because other democratic mobile phone or NTB manufacturers do not have a significant share or importance in the world market. 

Europe has the highest privacy protection. But Europe is not home to the most important mobile phone manufacturers. Chat GPT has created the following privacy benchmark.

South Korea and Japan have the status of Safe Countries in terms of data protection under the GDPR.

Basically, as a journalist and a person who values his privacy, I would not buy an iPhone from the USA. It is subject to weaker privacy legislation in the US. We all know from the media about the rather massive recent US spying on its European allies. Android is admittedly American too (Google). But it's an open, non-proprietary system. It is built on Linux and is more transparent. For a European, that basically means Samsung or Sony. For me, that leaves only Samsung, which is not ideal. I've historically experienced Sony as a bad photomobile, but I don't know how they're doing in recent years. There are Linux mobiles too, but that's not right for the average user.

Choosing a laptop and operating system from a data protection perspective

It's always going to be about caution, application and the level of commitment of the attacker. Jeff Bezos of Amazon, at the time he inadvertently boasted about his penis sent to a lover via hackers, was certainly not using a Chinese mobile phone either. But why compound those risks of losing sensitive personal data on multiple fronts.

On a laptop, it's much more about the operating system. Since 2007 I have been using Linux, which in my opinion has been faster, easier and more comfortable for the average user for the last few years than Windows or even macOS. I would probably avoid Lenovo and Huawei. I hate Apple for the inconvenience and the need to register, log in and log out everywhere. Anyway, macOS and Windows are more dangerous as proprietary operating systems from a privacy perspective than Linux, which is open source and thus much more under public scrutiny.

Data from smart sex toys on mobile

Why did I write this article in the first place? Western manufacturers (e.g. Svakom, Satisfyer) of smart mobile toys control the smart vibrator locally and use the internet only for partner communication over the internet. But Chinese manufacturers (most widely used apps Love Spouse, Nastasia Pro) locally control only 10 basic vibration modes and the rest - tapping, voice control, music with 1.5 second slowdown always via internet (Pretty Love probably only 0.5 seconds).

You're wondering why your playing with a vibrator running through the cloud when it's going local? If they're interested in even that little detail and you can't choose whether or not to share it ... then how are they probably interested in your sensitive personal data like photos, financial and business data ... you're thinking. Never mind, they'll have data on the vibrator sex game and know the music I listen to. But then when you combine that with other data, you get a pretty comprehensive picture of the user. Google says. combines cookies and conversion data from eshops with data from gmail, youtube. Also from Google storage etc. and sometimes it knows more about you than you know yourself. It's just that these are basically free services, so let's wish Google the data. But we normally pay for a vibrator and a mobile phone.

If we add that through an erotic app to the vibrator then text or audio video communication can also go, The threat of Chinese sex toys being used to steal sensitive private data is certainly not negligible even for the average person.