I lived in China for a couple of years, and it was generally accepted among the technologically savvy people I knew that most large web/software companies (Baidu, Tencent, Sina) spied on their users for the Chinese government.

Related: The Transparent Chinese http://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20131120/c20murong/en-us/

AFAIK, Google IME also sends user phases to their index of popular words, but they do allow you to turn it off.

Baidu has a switch which apparently allows users to stop sending data, but it doesn't do anything:

> Although this automatic data transmitting function is switched off in the default setting, Sugiura found that Baidu IME secretly sends users’ information even when the function is turned off.

Does anyone actually use the Baidu IME? Most people I know just use the IME built into the OS.

Simeji, on the other hand, is a bigger concern - it's a very popular Japanese keyboard for Android.

Isn't Simeji a brand of Baidu?

Either way, this is one hell of an information leak if the keyboard app is sending everything you type in somewhere else.

> Isn't Simeji a brand of Baidu?

Simeji was originally created by an indie dev, but then Baidu bought the app.

A lot of Chinese use Sogou IME or Baidu/Google. The built-in ones are not as good as 3rd party IMEs. I guess it's the same for Japanese.

The Windows Japanese IME is awful. I never gave OS X's one a chance though, since I've used Google's ever since I found it.

When it first come out it was pretty popular. Then when Google released theirs (http://www.google.co.jp/ime/) everyone I knew switched to that.

But in general, nearly all non-geeks stick to what came with their OS.

Baidu has denied such allegation, claiming that:

1. It's a cloud based IME. Some data is uploaded to improve user experience.

2. Data upload is encrypted therefore no privacy concerns.

3. Servers are located in Japan and complies with local regulations.

http://tech.qq.com/a/20131226/014894.htm (Don't shoot the messenger.)

The same as Google IME, except google has a evil virus-like secret upgrade popup.

Nope. See their FAQ https://support.google.com/ime/japanese/answer/166771?hl=ja which states otherwise.

Now I'm having trouble logging in to GMail: that link set a cookie saving my language as Japanese! D:

edit: Found the "language" option on Google sign-in -- it's the scroller in the bottom right labelled "日本語". There's a small blue logo next to it that looks like the UN flag. Hope this helped someone.

edit #2: It's also in the URL, replace /intl/jp/ with /intl/en/ (for English)

日本語 means "Japanese" (as a language), if you ever get into such a situation again.

Go to google.com/ncr to reset your Google to English :-)

see the part 同期とは "synchronization".

I think users without prior IME experience may have a hard time image what is the purpose of sync or what does it do. It's a user trained Bayesian db where you can input your most used words/combinations very fast.

It's like auto-complete in IMEs or Google Suggest where you can get a list of "hints" ordered by popularity.

Baidu IME does the same, except, according to OP:

> ... sends users’ information even when the function is turned off.