Temu is the online shopping app that we have presented to you in several other articles. And which puts us in front of a rather small problem of conscience: to buy while saving and not caring about the rest, or to make some assessments regarding the reliability and sustainability of the company?
Yes why Temu is a Chinese app that allows you to purchase various types of products online at very low prices. But there are many buts, which we will return to.
In these last few hours the Chinese e-commerce giant is at the center of a new controversy, of a completely different nature. According to a recent investigation, in fact, Temu is spyware. Let’s see everything there is to know about this disturbing hypothesis.
Is Temu spyware?
The article in question appeared on Grizzly Research, a New York stock market analysis company. And its headline is already emblematic: “We believe that PDD is a dying fraudulent company and that its Temu shopping app is cleverly hidden spyware that poses an urgent security threat to U.S. national interests .”
Let’s just remember that PDD Holdings is the company that owns Temu. Even though – paradoxically – the platform was activated for the first time in the United States in September 2022.
The analysis
The Grizzly Research report is dense, long and above all technical. But the analysis shows that Temu is an aggressive spyware and has all its most notable characteristics.
A table is clarifying in this sense. In a column some companies are listed: Temu, its competitors Shein and Alibaba, and then Amazon, eBay and the bogeyman TikTok. Well, the only one that has all the characteristics of a powerful spyware is Temu. To give a more concrete idea, Temu has all eighteen characteristics of a spyware, TikTok “only” eight.
Lo spyware
Spyware, simply put, is software that steals user data without their consent, and sells them elsewhere. In the case of a Chinese app, it’s not hard to imagine that Western users’ data would end up in the hands of the Beijing government.
It is exactly for this type of accusation that TikTok has suffered harsh ostracism in the West, and has been banned on corporate devices in several countries and supranational institutions.
In the report we read: “Temu is estimated to be losing $30 per order. The ad spend and shipping costs (1-2 weeks from China, fast delivery to the US) are astronomical. It makes you wonder how this business could ever be profitable.” The answer is implicit: Temu recovers its costs by selling the data stolen from customers.
Towards Temu’s ban?
Grizzly Research’s research revealed that some of the app’s developers are the same ones who developed Pinduoduo, also a PDD application, suspended from the Google Play Store because it was deemed malicious.
The researchers also found in Temu parts of malicious code that were already present in Pinduoduo and then removed.
Because of this analysts at Grizzly Research have called for Temu to be banned from major app stores: as stated by the title of the research, the app would put the national security of the United States at risk. China, in fact, asks companies based in its territory to share databases with the government.
Temu’s success
Temu is the e-commerce app of the moment. In its first nine months after launch, downloads in Europe and the United States were more than 100 million.
What is attractive, as we were saying, is the possibility of finding a vast range of products at rock-bottom prices. Furthermore, presented with graphics of great visual impact. But…
Doubts about Temu
Regardless of the recent accusation of being spyware, Temu had already raised strong doubts.
Meanwhile, the poor reliability: there have been many reports of undelivered packages, inconsistent charges and poor customer service, to say the least. Time had dealt with these aspects in a detailed article.
Then there is the environmental issue: when a product costs little or nothing, we should try to resist the idea of having made the deal of a lifetime, and ask ourselves what lies behind it.
And underneath there are several things. Very poor quality of materials, for example, which leads to an inevitable exasperation of the disposable attitude which is not really good for the planet (for two reasons: for the use of a new purchase and for the shipping of the same).
Furthermore, poor quality of materials is synonymous with the massive presence of polluting products.
In the end, paltry prices to the public mean paltry wages to those who produce those objects.