Huawei

I see that in the US Huawei cell phones are no longer recommended, even not allowed in some places like the Pentagon (?). The reason is that they fear that China has a backdoor to the phones and could use them for espionage and several other undesireable purposes.

I have a Huawei P10, and I'm quite happy with it. But now, several questions arise.

1. Is this relevant for regular, private, not-using-phone-for-sensitive-things users like me?
2. Should I replace the phone because of this? Maybe I wouldn't buy a Huawei if I were to buy a new phone today, but replacing a phone I'm happy with, is a bit more desperate.
3. Are Samsungs/other Androids any better in this respect? (for mostly practical reasons which I won't go into, iPhone is not an option)?
4. I may be paranoid, but is that a good enough reason to conspire against me?

FYI: In a previous thread, Huawei was criticized for not updating their software. That doesn't seem to be an issue now, I've received several updates.

pibbur who is confused.

PS: A coincidence: We recently had a political scandal here in Norway. A now-former minister went on holiday to Iran this summer, without informing the prime minister's office (against the rules, prime minister needs to know where her government is at all times) He also took his job cell phone (no idea what brand that was) with him (definitely against the rules). Our NSA-equivalent regards Iran as a one of three high-espionage-against-Norway-risk countries, and officials on his level is supposed to bring only a temporary phone into the country. According to a former head of the security agency there can be little doubt that his phone was hacked (we don't know and probably never will if real damage was done). It turns out that he also brought the phone with him on a previous trip to another high-risk country: China. Ouch! There were also a couple of other issues, irrelevant in this context. Anyhow he was allowed to choose to resign. DS.

Hard to tell. If your not a normally targeted person (Chinese dissident, govt person, or someone with corp. secrets (exec, technical, ...), do things that leave you open to blackmail and you don't use your phone for banking or similar then you are probably 100% safe. Having said that I don't really trust the security around my phone anyway (I have a samsung phone right now).
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Given that most electronics are made or assembled in China i often wondered if they were adding back-doors to electronics (remember even usb devices can easily be used to compromise a computer).
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Having said all that the recent H phones are suppose to be really nice and if they were available in the us i might consider one (my current phone is 4 years old and the only reason i haven't upgraded yet is that nothing new seems very good).

Have no fear pibbur, China is not USA's NSA and thus is not interested in your daily schedule, all they want is to sell stuff as cheap as possible - it's the low price that sells their goods, not annoying advertisments.

you said:

.... Having said that I don't really trust the security around my phone anyway (I have a samsung phone right now).
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Click to expand...

I don't use my phone for banking and things like that. Unlike my heavy, stationary PC monster, I bring my phone everywhere. I think hacking is more likely in towns where many people are gathered than in the less densly populated outskirt where the monster lives. Besides, I might lose my phone (hasn't happened yet, unless you count losing it in the toilet).

pibbur

Well, the only difference with Huawei is that the Chinese government might be able to spy on you, in addition to the Swedish, Norwegian and US one.

Unless you would spread negative communication about the communist party or such, I guess it doesn't matter that much.

To me, all phones are untrusted devices. They're a security and privacy nightmare. I use a cheap phone with a stripped down Android rom, and really just use it for its basic functions.

Waiting to see how this fella turns out: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

Apple playing games so it can get back to #2.

Bought a new Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 about two weeks ago for about 1/5 the price of a current edition Samsung Galaxy. I like it except for one major potential problem - poor 4G LTE signal quality. Hoping this is just an issue with T-Mobile towers in my location. Will be switching in a new SIM today and using AT&T towers. If the problem goes away, I'll keep the phone. If not, it's going back to amazon. Another thing is it takes 2 weeks to root the phone due to xiaomi 's security checks. Some people are now reporting two months on some of the forums (!).