Beware of China's "prism door"

With Cisco involved, the Prism gate event escalated again. Snowden revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency monitors Chinese networks and computers through Cisco routers, and that Microsoft, Google and Apple have mastered China's operating system share in addition to Cisco-represented infrastructure, making the Chinese Internet vulnerable or even fragile.

Even more alarming, Chinese netizens are in a privacy environment. The author has recently written "China's Prism plan" will be called "what" analysis of the domestic potential monitoring problems. But it was too few to go deep. China's Snowden has not yet appeared and is expected to never appear.

In the Snowden, nine companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, AOL, Paltalk, Skype and YouTube, have been accused of spying on the company, which is suspected of opening up its servers to the NSA, Makes it easy for governments to monitor mail, instant calls and data access by millions of internet users worldwide.

In the case of internet companies involved, there are plenty of companies in the country that are aware of the core data of Chinese netizens. The nine internet companies and prism door-related products categorized, can be divided into IM chat tools (Paltalk, Skype, Gtalk, MSN, imessage,yahoo! messager), email (yahoo, AOL, GMAIL, HOTMAIL), social networking (Facebook), storage-sharing services (Youtube, icloud, etc.). They all have the following characteristics:

1. Master the mass of users. In addition to Paltalk, other companies have billion-level users. Paltalk because of internationalization and cross-platform characteristics, although only 3 million users are involved;

2. Master personal data. IM, mailboxes, social networks, storage-sharing services all involve a lot of private information associated with people and accounts. The authorities ' coveted privacy data is the source of Internet companies ' involvement in Prism doors;

3. Global market. Because the main target of the Prism gate monitoring is the overseas user. Therefore, none of the nine internet companies is a very successful international company.

Looking back at domestic internet companies, there are a handful of internet giants with huge users.

Old Big portal Sina, NetEase and Sohu, the new three is called bat namely Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent; 360 rely on the strong rise of security services to become the opposite of QQ and another desktop empire. However, social networking Facebook's counterpart in China is still QQ, and storage-sharing services correspond to these giants in China.

Youku potatoes, unlike YouTube, are more of a video media than a shared community. So Youku potatoes don't need to be considered.

There is also a product can not be absent: yy voice. In many social hot events played a role in gathering and emerging. such as Taobao Sellers rally denounced. YY Voice has 400 million registered users, is a small volume.

Look at the 2nd private personal data.

Sina Weibo has been a key monitoring object;

NetEase has a very high share of mailbox and news commentary system;

Sohu's Sogou is equipped with input method, browser, and so close to the user's client, Sohu itself also has a mailbox, Weibo (basic can be ignored).

Baidu because the account system construction is not perfect and then lack of personal private data, but there is still a large number of user behavior data, you searched what, click on what, search, Baidu know. In addition, Baidu Cloud's exerting force lets it have more cloud to store data, include file, photograph.

Alibaba has related to the livelihood of the electricity merchants shopping data and credit data, what you have bought, Ali know. But Amazon and ebay, which are not covered by the nine major US companies, can also see that the value of E-commerce data is not as large as other types of data. But a person's purchase, Alipay account, associated bank card and delivery address, can be traced to the extreme privacy data.

Tencent, however, is an extremely scary company that grasps the extremely private data of the user's core. When you have been on the net, with who ditch through the video, the content of the communication, your friend relationship, you are interested in the group, and even you have a few QQ vest, QQ than you remember also clear. In addition to QQ this basic IM, and Sina Weibo has become a counterweight to the potential of Tencent Weibo, China's largest social network QQ space, enough of the traditional communications to replace the micro-letter, QQ with the natural binding QQ mailbox, and Pat Xun, and other related to the electronic business data, are enough to locate a person and inventory its history, analysis of its characteristics, Understand their preferences. Far more than already, QQ account opening strategy has made it the largest Third-party account system. Your life in Tencent is recorded, you live outside of Tencent, at least when you login through QQ account What website, QQ also know. QQ Strong account system, so that it provides users with a one-stop life at the same time, but also mastered the most private user data.

360 and QQ at the same level. If Tencent just mastered the user's internet situation, 360 mastered the user's all digital life. From you on the boot will be attentive to remind you to boot, the Internet has a browser and 360 security packages for your escort, 360 also has launched a search engine and is vigorously building their own account system to encourage users to log in. Of course, 360 of the digital ambitions are much more than that. The latest news is that 360 will release its first hardware, some say 360 routers, and some say 360 wireless network card. No matter what, 360 of data ambitions have been extended from the desktop to the device. On the one hand, 360 from the equipment level to protect the user's security, on the one hand, 360 from the equipment level to obtain user data. Worst of all, 360 have been repeatedly exposed to collect and upload user data, revealing user privacy behavior. The daily economic news, for example, has a lengthy report. Other media outlets have also exposed 360 of alleged breaches of privacy. The author has reservations about this matter, but it is worth warning: 360 have this ability. It needs to be clear that there are no motives or constraints.

YY Voice has a lot of voice communication data, similar to Skype. and the meeting function of its chat room function will increase the probability of its being monitored.

Layers peel off, you can see the domestic in a similar Prism gate event, to a number of major internet companies to carry out a ranking, Tencent and 360 most likely to become the focus of the target. Next is Sina and NetEase. Next may be yy voice. And Sohu, Baidu, Ali data monitoring value will be smaller.

Of course, the author never said that these companies were involved in a project like a prism door. But internet companies should be vigilant: one side is a power, one side is the user, while the collective interests (such as national security, social security, stability Task), one side is personal interests, the enterprise's bottom line is where, how to hold the bottom line?

Although foreign internet companies are difficult to take off, some of the practices are still worth learning.

1, it is time to modify the user agreement. The question of ownership and use of data remains vague. But at least users should have access to the right to know: what information I have is collected, where it is used, what I have control over the data, who my data is likely to be seen, and how secure my data is. However, Tencent's registration agreement only includes "without your consent, Tencent will not disclose your personal information to any company, organization or individual other than Tencent, except as otherwise stipulated in the laws and regulations." "The registration agreement of companies such as Baidu is a similar simple explanation." In addition to too simple, Tencent and other companies themselves how to use and use of our data, it is not known. Google, in addition to the user Registration agreement to specify a special 5,000 words of the "privacy Policy." The user data and privacy-related policies are thoroughly described.

This is the reflection of Google and other companies to the user's privacy in awe. Some say it's artificial, it's not worth it. But this is like a fire problem, when you are asked to take part in the fire drill, may feel very reluctant to make a fuss, but no accident has been, an accident is disastrous.

2. Do you really need so much data? Some experts say users will get better service by contributing more data to internet companies. Reason。 Sadly, users often have no idea what data they are being collected by internet companies. such as cookies, software usage data, browser history, location data obtained from LBS, mobile phone address, etc. are often collected silently. Even a simple ebook app is greedy to get all the permissions on the phone and collect data. Do you really need that much data? If necessary, why not disclose what data you have collected from users?

3, the publication of data sharing and use. Who are our data? What happens? This should be an issue of concern to all users. Google records the prism and every request from other government organizations, and whether Google grants information, the content of the information it grants, and the number of accounts it affects. Google publishes a two-issue transparency report each year to publish information about the user data required to be provided in accordance with relevant regulations. In this report, Google will list how much it has received requests to submit user data. These requests come from governments around the world. After Prism gate time, companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft are still pushing the government to allow them to open more information. At home, there seems to be no relevant report on transparency. There is only one way to reject suspicion and gain trust: transparency. In the same way, only transparency can act as a watchdog.

4. The dual status of the government department. Interestingly, the role played by government departments in this process is often also evil. The prism door has caught the Obama administration in a maelstrom of public opinion. But the supervision of the enterprise often needs the relevant government departments to hand.

It is impossible to expect the self-regulation of an enterprise with profit-driven objectives. Mutual supervision among enterprises, the third party regulation of trade associations and the supervision of public opinion in social media are indispensable. For example, 360 and Kingsoft have repeatedly accused each other of revealing or violating privacy, but in addition to sparking a war of words or even lawsuits, or become a means of competition, does not seem to promote the entire privacy protection system. The Government's participation, through the top-level design, through the continuous improvement of laws and regulations, can fundamentally play a role in regulation, to avoid the collection, use and sharing of data is too inflated.

California, for example, has the Internet Privacy Protection Act as early as 2004. Last year, California Attorney General Camara Harris Kamala to deal with 6 big companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, rim and HP to better disclose mobile app-related privacy protections to consumers. We can see that governments also often play a role in monitoring and promoting privacy protection.

Everything has two sides, privacy protection is no exception. Public power will urge privacy protection, will also extend tentacles to the user's privacy space, companies can use data to improve services, but also may leak or even sell the data. Only transparent and supporting the management, supervision system, can form a self-perfection balance system. This is also the foundation on which this society works well.

Founder of Love Technology Network

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)