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

What does an ordinary person have on their mobile or laptop

According to data protection experts, the average person doesn't need to worry about Chinese cellphones. Chinese state agencies aren't interested in your notes, the time you pick up your kids from kindergarten, your spending on apples and meat, and your photos from your trip. However, 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 there are no major mobile phone manufacturers in Europe. Chat GPT has created the following privacy benchmark.

Criterion	🇪🇺 EU (GDPR)	🇰🇷 South Korea (PIPA)	🇯🇵 Japan (APPI)	🇺🇸 USA	🇹🇼 Taiwan (PDPA)

Level of protection

Very high

High

Medium to high

Uneven

Medium

Central Law

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Regulator

Yes (EDPB/DPAs)

Yes (PIPC)

Yes (PPC)

Miscellaneous

Not uniform

Transfer abroad

Severely restricted

Restricted

Enabled (EU recognised)

Looser

Vaguely regulated

User rights

Very strong

Strong

Good

Variable

Good

Sanctions

Up to 4 % turnover

High

Mild to moderate

Low to medium

Rather low

Consent as a basis

Required

Required

Not always

Mostly opt-out

Mandatory (with exceptions)

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 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 have historically experienced Sony as a bad photomobile, but I don't know how they are 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 actually write this article? Western manufacturers (e.g. Svakom, Satisfyer) of smart toys for mobile phones control the smart vibrator locally and use the internet only for communication between partners over the internet. Chinese manufacturers (the most widespread applications Love Spouse, Nastasia Pro) however, control only 10 basic vibration modes locally and the rest – tapping, voice control, music with a 1.5 second delay – always via the internet (Pretty Love about only 0.5 seconds).

Are you wondering why your vibrator play is being sent through the cloud when it can be done locally? If they are interested in this little thing and you can't choose whether you want to share it or not... Just like they are probably interested in your sensitive personal data like photos, financial and business data... You might be thinking the same thing. No problem, they will have data about erotic vibrator play and know what music I listen to. But when you then combine it with other data, you get a fairly comprehensive picture of the user. For example, Google connects cookies and e-shop conversion data from e-shops with data from Gmail, YouTube. Also from Google storage, etc., and sometimes they know more about you than you do. But these are basically free services, so we take the data from Google. But we normally pay for the vibrator and 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.