Haha, you made my day. Huawei is likely worse than Google in tracking. Unless your reason is to avoid Google specifically.

And if you flash a good custom OS like GrapheneOS, maybe LineageOS without microG, then Google doesn't track you even if you use their hardware. Even better if you use a secure OS like GrapheneOS or standard AOSP without Google Play Services or bloatware.

They are "likely worse", IE. you don't know? IMO they are not worse and the data collected by Huawei is useless compared to anything Google collects since I don't live in or near China. They also don't share it with anyone that might kick down my door if I like something that the US someday in the future sees as the new red scare.

You don't need to live in China to be affected by China. There are many ways a country can use information on foreigners to advance the country's goals, affecting said foreigners.

Some people unironically believe "Better China than Five Eyes, haha, they're too far away!".

I see nothing wrong with that. Looking at where the US is going I'd hate to be there if something I like becomes the next Red Scare.

Why is that wrong?

I wondered that too and I concluded that it's because the threat model is different.

* China spying will steal your data and identity so the safety of your money and assets will be at risk. Your photos may be sold, your credit cards may be stolen, etc.

* Five Eyes spying will hurt you if you're non-normative. Say you're a casual drug user or perform low scale criminality. Or say you're doing a thing that's legal now but illegal later.

Presumably there's the idea that China could blackmail you but I have a hard time believing anyone would go for that over just letting their naked pics on the Internet.

So the Five Eyes spying is probably harmless to someone totally normative. The China spying is probably harmful to them.

For the non-normative, dark-web peer to peer Bitcoin user who is buying LSD, the China spying is probably better.

You must be in the second category if you think Huawei will steal credit cards and rob you.

Yeah, I was eliding all the pieces as to how to get there. I think they're more likely to have unpunished rogue employees, I think they're more likely to have poor security practices, and so on and so forth.

A friend of mine was on the team that investigated the Twitter 'breach' that got those Saudi activists disappeared. Through personal experience I find it easy to believe that technique would have been more effective on a Chinese company but since I cannot communicate that experience and since you don't share it, I can accept that our views must diverge.

And yes, I'm also a drug-using dark-web crypto user. Had to keep that one quiet from the investigator friend, eh?

Illegal behavior is hardly the only reason the FBI targets people.

I picked "non-normative" intentionally.

Because your information is still getting stolen. Isn't this obvious? There is no lesser evil much less so than a country that doesn't comprehend concepts like "privacy" and "human rights".

I've only owned one Huawei phone, but it definitely had Google's software installed. (and after running some network analysis, I noticed it also phoned home to China)

I'm very interested in how do you run the said network analysis? I'm considering buying an Android again but I'd like to properly tame it by cutting off as much spy traffic as possible.

I don't remember what I was using at the time, but there's a variety of ways to do it, depending on what you're looking for. Generally, you want to capture network traffic at the packet level and run it through a tool to help you analyze it. The tool you pick would depend on what you're looking for and the type of analysis you're doing. Here's a few tools that come to mind:

https://www.wireshark.org/

https://www.snort.org/

https://www.ntop.org/products/traffic-analysis/ntop/

Thanks. I'm particularly interested in how did you find out that your phone was calling Chinese servers.

Not the original parent commenter but a sniffer like Wireshark would reveal the url(s) or IP addresses being requested by the phone to call home - it’s fairly easy to check if those belong to a Chinese IP range.

What you are looking at is like buying an iPhone and wanting to block Apple. You won't be able to from the phone itself (unless you flash another ROM but then you'd be better off buying something like a pine phone).

If you are really serious and you won't flash a new ROM then you will need to filter the traffic after it leaves the phone as you cannot trust the phone or its apps. IMO the only way to do this is to use a VPN to connect to a device that runs a proper firewall. It could either be a Raspberry Pi you carry around (bit too geeky for me) or a server somewhere you trust. I connect to a pfsense machine at home via VPN and filter traffic with pfblockerng. You can block on geography if you want.

My girlfriend's iPhone is just as bad as my OnePlus..