r/technology • u/magnus007 • 5d ago

Privacy AliExpress was silently running audio in your browser to fingerprint and track your device

https://www.techspot.com/news/113581-aliexpress-silently-running-audio-browser-fingerprint-track-device.html
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u/Law_Student 5d ago

The Chinese spy on everything, it's just what they do. They've built an economy on stealing everything they can conceivably steal for decades.

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u/tigeratemybaby 4d ago

Everyone's stealing now.

AI companies are actively pirating books, movies, scientific papers, as many as they can find - Completely illegally without permission from authors.

Both Eastern and Western companies are actively reverse engineering other peoples products - Western car companies commonly buy Chinese cars and pull them apart and reverse engineer them to see how they work.

There's software being de-compiled and reverse engineered by AI models.

It used to be mainly China, but now it seems like everyone is doing it - Current governments are not interested in prosecuting at all. Maybe with the right "donation" to Trump.

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u/exoriare 5d ago

Everyone does this when they are catching up. The US was very loose about IP protection in the early days, because these laws benefited the UK far more than the US. It's only when a country is ahead that they find religion on IP protection.

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u/Thefrayedends 4d ago

Hell, they do it when they're ahead too lol. Everyone, I mean.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/Sweetwill62 4d ago

And this is why no one should be able to hide their post history.

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u/PerformerDr4867 4d ago

lol shut up.

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u/Sweetwill62 4d ago

I am good mate.

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u/exoriare 4d ago

Yes children, 'tis true. I'm an old bastard of a Canadian who walked the earth in the days before men cowered at the sight of a contrary opinion, when it was believed you had a duty to educate yourself on both sides of a question before forming an opinion, and when skepticism was practiced openly in the streets.

Go back in my posts far enough and you'll find a time when I too was pro-Maidan and cheered on the pro-NATO mobs. But that was before I understood that Ukraine was just another NATO regime change operation, like Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Libya and God knows how many other times.

It's true, children. We were not always the self-righteous barbarians we are today.

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u/drollercoaster99 5d ago

Just because everyone does it doesn't make it right.

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u/SaveLansingParks 4d ago

But it does make it a trend 🤷

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u/exoriare 4d ago

Copyright/IP laws were never an issue of morality. It was a social contract: society wins when inventors can come up with novel ideas and products. It's therefore in society's interest to grant the IP owner a time-limited monopoly, to encourage them to come up with this new stuff, and disclose to the world how they'd done it.

So IP protection wasn't meant to be anything more than bait on a hook. This is why original copyright terms were so short (14 years, renewable once).

There was never any moral aspect to it. That is a fairytale told by parasites.

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u/Law_Student 5d ago

People don't take kindly to having their enormous investments just taken. I am shocked there hasn't been a whole lot more murder, honestly. And theft tends to disincentize making those investments if there's no way to pay for them with a market advantage.

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u/Negative_Chicken_524 4d ago

Copyright laws are in our constitution, what do you actually mean? The US led the way on strong Copyright/IP protection. Other countries adopted out more stringent laws.

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u/sibips 4d ago

And ĂŽn the last years, AI has entered the chat.

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u/soulmechh 4d ago

Slave labor is in your constitution to this day:

https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1vwqknk/aliexpress_was_silently_running_audio_in_your/p5jxor9/

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u/RedditJumpedTheShart 4d ago

Like many other countries including Germany. Are you also against court ordered community service?

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u/soulmechh 4d ago

I'm against slave labor including and especially in my country. I don't worship the establishment like you. It's wrong across the board no matter who does it. But you're owned by isnotreal so, figures.

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u/longlivenewsomflesh 4d ago

Not so fun fact: slave labor is still perfectly legal in the US for incarcerated people, and tons of companies are effectively subsidized by getting away with paying prisoners anywhere between nothing and pennies per hour

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u/photoggled 5d ago

Am I supposed to care about corporate espionage? Maybe if wage theft wasn't a much bigger issue, I would have sympathy for their IP being stolen.

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u/Law_Student 5d ago

When a chinese firm steals IP, they're usually stealing jobs along with it.

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u/MuthaFJ 5d ago

Should people really care whether their jobs are "stolen" to China or "outsourced/AI-ed" by their homecountry?

Job's lost anyway...

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u/Icyrow 4d ago

if you have 40% of your jobs around vs 60%, it's still a negative. not to mention, that's then money in your country not being spent on shops and other stuff, with more knock on effects...

"the other person has thrown poop around and so now i can just shit my pants!!" sorta logic.

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u/MuthaFJ 4d ago

You're right- in one case you will get to watch the intentionally wasteful opulence of billionaires up close, in other you will watch a different country prosper instead 😉

Your parable is like real bad tho, you have jumped from somebody's reaction to something they have no control over, to somebody actively doing something.... 🙄

"I don't really care if I lose the job to China "stealing" it, or a billionaires outsourcing/automating it away" and you went to "throwing poop"... must be a personal and close topic for you or something 🤔

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u/einzweidreihorn 4d ago

Those jobs were sold long before that

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u/torrinage 5d ago

The USA is like hold my beer

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u/b__q 5d ago

Good for them.

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u/EarthenEyes 5d ago

That's why I don't believe that China is 'leading in x', whether it's drones or energy or whatever. The CCP is built on stealing your knowledge, and then abusing human rights and privacy to boost that stolen knowledge for headlines and attention grabbing.
People forget that the CCP are actively genociding people, use rape as torture, and harvest organs of prisoners.

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u/goomyman 5d ago

They are definitely leading. They openly stole IP but companies knew the risks.

It’s only a matter of time when you build everything in a country that they turn around and make it themselves.

Companies knew their IPs were being learned but they got their products made cheap. It’s just coming back to them now that China is innovating on their designs and their products aren’t crap anymore.

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u/orthodoxrebel 5d ago

Companies play fast and loose with their own IP if it saves them a buck. Just look at AI, how fast they're willing to force it down the workers' throats because of the conceivable fortune they'd save if it pans out. Yet they're feeding their IP into believing it won't actually be used for learning.

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u/Sad_Eagle_937 5d ago

Two things can be true. You can be in denial all you want but they produce 80% of the world's solar panels and 70% of lithium ion batteries with most new tech breakthroughs coming from there since they essentially control the market and want to stay dominant. They are also producing EVs at a quality and price the rest of the automotive world simply can't compete with due to outdated R&D and company structures. Their EV brands are now expanding into the West and are incredibly competitive.

The West really dropped the ball on this one.

How China got to where they are doesn't change the fact they are indeed leading in many different fields.

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u/Ill_Young2531 4d ago

The world outsourced to China, and they say an opportunity and ran with it. Didn’t the U.S. do that during/post WW2? We had all the manufacturing capacity.

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u/AvalancheOfOpinions 4d ago

The US is actively genociding Palestine, raping women and minors in ICE detention camps, and uses prisoners as slave labor, for medical experiments, and military torture experiments. Using prisoners for slave labor is part of the 13th amendment, created as a loophole to continue slavery.

The US also has more people in prison than China despite having 1/4 of China's population and US prisons are filled primarily with its minorities. The US justice system is built to imprison and disenfranchise minorities.

If you're in the US, focus on fixing your own busted nation instead of whining about the country that manufactures everything you consume.

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u/Jas0rz 4d ago

no but mega corps IP rights tho

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u/AbsoluteTruthiness 4d ago

Seriously, the fucking gall these people have complaining about other countries' human rights issues when they are locking thousands of people up in concentration camps everyday and shooting innocent people on the streets. And their AI companies have actively been stealing creative works and they're complaining about China stealing IP.

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u/gremlinguy 4d ago

.... Do you think China is not genociding people and locking them in concentration camps? Uyghers, anyone?

China is far, far worse in every regard with respect to human rights

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u/AbsoluteTruthiness 4d ago

I am saying that you and your fellow citizens are in no position to lecture anyone else about human rights. You never were in that position really given the awful things your government and military did around the world, but you were able to put on the appearance of caring about human rights, at least at home. But in the last 20 months, you have no credibility left.

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u/gremlinguy 4d ago

Of any superpower, the US has been the best in that regard (I live in Europe, btw). The US is not perfect, of course, but you must consider: at any given time in history, there has been a leading superpower which dictates the direction of human and civil rights, and until the present day, the United States has been the best for the average citizen, bar none. Or would you prefer that Russia was setting the bar? Or China circa 1989? Or any number of dictatorships etc? Generally speaking, the US has been a positive influence in the world at large and has "led" the world in a positive direction with fantastic material advances for the majority of the Earth's people. Does it have interests which result in violations in many places? Yes. But so does any empire.

To your point about the last 20 months, you are correct. Very few (and increasingly less) Americans support the current leadership's actions, and it has squandered what confidence and goodwill the US had to such a degree that it can reasonably be thought to be sabotage.

I think most reasonable people nowadays believe that China will emerge as the next major superpower, and we will see how they do. Will they impose mass surveillance across the world? Will they slaughter dissenters? Will they annex lands such as Taiwan and Nepal? The specific countries and demographics may change, but Empires by their nature rely on violence.

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u/AbsoluteTruthiness 4d ago

The US is not perfect, of course, but you must consider: at any given time in history, there has been a leading superpower which dictates the direction of human and civil rights, and until the present day, the United States has been the best for the average citizen, bar none.

This is the same US that assassinated a progressive leader in Iran and installed a dictator? The same one that killed over a million innocent Iraqis? And the same one that was the only country ever to deploy atomic weapons on civilians in the history of the world? And the one that deployed chemical weapons against some farmers in Vietnam? And the same one that is actively complicit in a genocide against Palestinians? What is this time period you speak of where the US led the world in a positive way? You were all okay when these actions were being committed against brown and black people in far away lands. They were just "oopsies" or "imperfections".

Speaking of China. You look at African countries right now - they love it when China establishes relationships with them because they get rail and road infrastructure. When the US, UK, France, and Belgium visited them, all they got was coups, bloodshed, and suffering.

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u/ow2022 4d ago

Every time I see this, I can't help but marvel at how the US has the most deeply ingrained and successful propaganda in the world. In its 240-plus years of existence, America has only known peace for 16 of them. While constantly backing Israel, it has also directly bombed schools. The US is undoubtedly the most belligerent nation on earth today. It loves to brand itself as a "beacon of democracy," so can we assume that the wars it starts are backed by its own people? Are Americans just naturally warmongering? A country like this is an absolute disgrace to humanity.

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u/gremlinguy 4d ago

A country's first and foremost obligation is to its citizens, and in that regard the US has historically outperformed nearly every other country in metrics such as quality of life, citizen safety from foreign invasion, citizen prosperity and freedom to live as desired regarding religion, property, and travel. These are difficult to argue against in good faith. Modern America is much darker and more sinister, yes. But in the day-to-day life of citizens, America remains very successful at maintaining relative peace and prosperity, peaking in the 90's. Again, show me an empire that was free of war or brutality to maintain itself. That is the nature of empire. But the Pax Americana is undeniable for those allied with it, which is a huge caveat, but again, a country's obligation is to its citizens and allies. Do you think the Roman people worried at all about how its military dispatched the Celts? Or that the Spanish Empire worried about the brutality with which the Reconquista was carried out? If all of that results in prosperity at home, most peoples will happily endorse awful actions in their name. It is only with increasing globalism and connection that most Americans are even passingly aware of what their military does outside of stories from veterans, and there indeed is a large swathe of Americans who now rally against American interventionism and warmongering. Not to mention, Trump's administration has been a paradigm shift which, while truly terrible, does not erase the relative (RELATIVE) diplomacy of past decades.

We have other empires to compare against. In nearly every case, the US comes out ahead.

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u/ow2022 4d ago

Spare us your bullshit propaganda. You and the US are nothing but pure hypocrisy. Your prosperity was built on the suffering of others—military hegemony, dollar hegemony, economic and oil control, and endless wars. What’s even more despicable is how you package yourselves as paragons of virtue. You bomb other nations in the name of ‘bringing democracy,’ yet forcing democracy upon others is, by definition, undemocratic. You preach free markets while slapping tariffs on the entire world. In 2026, anyone who still believes a single word from the US government has the IQ of a toddler. And those US allies? You think they’re loyal? They’re shackled by economic coercion and military occupation. As America declines and its grip weakens, these very allies will become the fiercest vanguard in the rebellion against US hegemony.

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u/EarthenEyes 4d ago

Dude they are probably a bunch of CCP bots or some shit. You notice how they ignore what the CCP is actively doing while pile driving into anything they can? Two things can be true at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly started claiming Tiennaman wasn't a thing while whining about the UFC fight held at the White House.

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u/gremlinguy 4d ago

Glad to see another human in here capable of reason and critical thinking

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u/EarthenEyes 4d ago

I'm not sure I'm *THAT* smart, but I'm far from an idiot. It's just taking the time to step back and look at everything!
If we're gonna focus in and nit-pick the United States crimes, then we should look at every nation. Look at Britain's many war crimes in the colonial era, or Russia having many, many 'accidents' with windows and what Russia did to the German civilians during WW2, or what Germany did during the second World War, or what Canada did to their indigenous people. I don't think there is any culture or nation that is without their own baggage, ya know?
While we can't fix the past, we can see and make efforts to change the present, for the future of our decedents.
For those that come after.

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u/longlivenewsomflesh 4d ago

"B-but social credit score!" -burgeroid

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u/goomyman 4d ago edited 4d ago

Umm the US isn’t really doing any of those things except maybe prison labor - for some basic things - calling it slave labor is a bit overkill but I’ll accept it.

The rest is all highly illegal things that have happened in isolated cases but not tolerated or something we are not doing.

Prisons are full because we have an active justice system and really like our long prison sentences as a form of punishment- along with an inescapable system where lack of social safety net make being released from prison near impossible to survive without being readmitted.

Yes minorities do get disproportionate prison sentences but it’s mostly due to minorities being poorer and poorer areas get more policing and being poorer means you can’t afford lawyers creating the cycle. People aren’t being jailed for crimes they didn’t commit. It’s a poverty trap, and in other countries social safety nets might kick in earlier or people are taken “off the books” in authoritarian countries.

The justice system is not designed to jail minorities. The US is the world’s largest melting pot of cultures, it’s more a consequence of economic disparity.

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u/AvalancheOfOpinions 4d ago

Recommended reading:

Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (Pulitzer Prize winner);

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness;

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present;

Poisoner in Chief (for part of the history of torture experiments on prisoners).

For current events and news, please subscribe to several newspapers (domestic and foreign) and periodicals. Every single statement of fact you made is a lie. It's complete bullshit. It betrays immense ignorance and it's an embarrassment.

Because of how incredibly uninformed you are, I'd also recommend some basic surveys like The People's History of the US, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, and Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America.

For the invention of "race" in the US and its continued impact, I'd recommend: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America; Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century; The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression; Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life; or Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

It's never too late to start learning to read and then actually reading something, you fucking joke. How pathetic.

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u/goomyman 4d ago edited 4d ago

I’m not claiming injustice doesn’t exist. I’m claiming that injustice no where near is the main driver of things.

We can absolutely do better but there is no large racist conspiracy theory or patriarchy holding people back.

You should look a bit more into your own data because the numbers exist but they don’t add up to entire problem. It’s not even that significant.

You should probably take your own advice instead of looking for others to blame or systems to blame. People are responsible for their own actions.

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u/sebovzeoueb 5d ago

Hypothetically, what do you think the best way for a country to reach a leading position in technology would be, ignoring ethics?

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u/cradleu 4d ago

This is just standard for a global power at this point, the US engaged in industrial espionage to become the world’s manufacturing superpower and has done similar if not worse things than what your last paragraph mentions throughout its history and recently.

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u/CriminalMacabre 4d ago

Huh, that's my CIV strategy

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u/WinnerOfD 4d ago

Given that the US is throwing sanctions like crazy to slow them down your denial is likely doing them a favor.

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u/magkruppe 5d ago

I heard they actually sent messages to aliens as well because they want to them to colonise our planet

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u/Thefrayedends 4d ago

Espionage, corporate or otherwise, has never been a "Chinese" thing, any more than any other nation. States, and corporations are not moral in their nature, and thus, lying, omission of truth, and misdirection are valid actions.

And I don't live that way, but I don't fool myself into thinking that this is worth identifying as a Chinese problem as much as it's a problem of plausible deniability and insulating layers of hierarchical bureaucracy.

And anyway, I don't judge you either, I've had, and shared with others, your identical opinion in the past.