Possible data breach with temu

Privacy Questions
1

Back in the summer time i tried temu out on the iOS app (wasn’t as deep into privacy back then but still rather aware) and I, for some reason, allowed access to my photo library (I misunderstood the permission thinking it was one time access but it was full access) and I’m just worried if temu possibly uploaded and parsed my entire photo library in the time i realized that I had accidentally let that permission be granted. On top of that, especially being the #1 app in the appstore, I would assume that apple wouldn’t have let any permission/privledge abuse take place without suspending the app or making news with a warning.

I have no reason to be looked into or followed and my life is boring, but can someone talk some reason into me to possibly calm me down?

My assumption is not only would they ruin there reputation but the amount of data to upload everybody’s photo galleries and parse that all seems absurd and someone would have noticed something especially with the scrutiny around the apps origin. The app since its September update has moved to the iOS photo selector that will only receive the photo you selected not view the whole photo library which I would guess Would mean that photo data probably wasn’t essential to what they were looking for/possibly mining for (especially since the average person’s camera roll is probably full of useless junk). Also being the number one app on the ios app store, I would assume apple would have made sure any permissions/privileges weren’t being abused.

2

There is so much more useful and easy to process data they can collect (and openly do collect – see: analytics) than your photo library. 99.9999% of people are not interesting enough for gathering every bit of data ever because remember, you still need some human to parse the data at some point in the chain and somewhere to store all that data – you think [insert government here] or [insert big tech company here] would spend the copious amounts of money to store and process that amount of data at a stupidly large scale?

3 Likes
3
  1. They are one of the fastest growing marketplace apps in the US. It would be stupid to do something funky to dampen that hard-to-get advantage.
  2. The sister app company, Pinduoduo, was under intense public spotlights, because of Android vulnerability abuses, shone on by the many security companies. Probably the security companies would have done a similar analysis on its sister app as well.
  3. Malware that lift sensitive data from your photos exist, but for being such an app (Chinese, highly competitive market, questionable circumstances about affiliate, etc.), you are likelier to hear about any exploits they do or have done. Meanwhile, what has been done is done. Trying to relax may be the best thing you can do, despite the uncertainty.