A new ultra-cheap Chinese shopping app taking Britain by storm could be illegally harvesting the data of phone users, claims a report.
Temu, pronounced tee-moo, offers shoppers cut-price products shipped directly from Chinese factories. It launched in the UK in April and has surged in popularity, becoming the most-downloaded app on Google’s Play Store following similar success in the US.
Distinguished by its bright orange logo, Temu is thought to have more than nine million users in the UK who have been drawn in by its ultra-low prices and free delivery.
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But alarm bells are ringing among analysts and observers of Chinese companies.
This month, financial analyst Siegfried Eggert, the boss of US firm Grizzly Research, published a report claiming Temu was one of the ‘most dangerous’ popular apps, alleging it contained ‘aggressive’ programmes designed to harvest data.
Eggert also accused Temu’s owner, Chinese e-commerce giant PDD, of ‘intentionally’ hiding the software within the app.
‘We Believe Temu is the most dangerous app in wide circulation,’ the report said.
A Chinese app exists to mostly harvest data? Noooo, really?
Imagine my shock
Or really any app that offers a service way too good.
People should generally more sensitive how valuable their data is.
They never have, nor ever will, case in point, temu
Anecdotal, but after I installed temu, someone repeatedly tried to access my Facebook account. Every hour I’d get a password reset request. Had them happening for 3 days straight. Thought about what I’d recently installed and it was only Temu. Uninstalled and the attempts stopped immediately.
Chinese app: illegally harvests data
Me:
They were talking about it on the radio today and everyone seems to have gone Temu mad, helped by their unsustainable business model making everything wildly cheap (which I must admit is making my intrigued).
Leaving aside privacy concerns and the fact that all the spinning roulette wheel nonsense makes it look dodgy (which tries very hard to drive you to us the app, which is where the privacy concerns come in - coincidence?), as well as the allegations of slave labour, the thing that puts me off is that everything in their ads looks like some kind of sexual device.
Same as Wish - everything they advertise is “wtf is that thing”. Probably designed to make you click and look. They’ve got you at that point.
helped by their unsustainable business model making everything wildly cheap (which I must admit is making my intrigued).
It’s a whole heap of utter crap though. Actually depressing to browse through.
I’m so sick of seeing ads for this business. I’ve no interest in shopping there, it’s not relevant to anything I would have searched or used before… but there it is, everywhere. Screams of cheap crap and scams.
Never install an app when you could use a web page. If you really must install something you know might be dodgy then put it in a work profile or on an old phone with no personal data. Most people just can’t be arsed, but the basic steps to protect your security and privacy online are pretty simple.
*is
Its a Chinese app, it is doing that.
