It’s all of iCloud though and all of your Apple data including iMessage and the likes it’s hardly optional. But it is better than malware you’re right I’m just not sure how much better.
Unless I’m missing something, iMessage is still end-to-end encrypted, so it can’t be passively monitored (Apple controls the key exchange so technically they could impersonate users, although I’m not even sure the key exchange part is in China considering how it’s tied to the APNS & Activation service which as far as I know is back at the mothership).
The backups are encrypted though aren’t they using your iPhone passcode in addition to whatever else it’s encrypted with but they still manage to give them up when they have a warrant (or whatever it is) handed to them for it.
On top of that though I doubt they’re too worried about iMessage because no one in China uses it
Backups are only made if iCloud backup is enabled, which at this point we’ve ruled out as a very bad idea (with a Chinese iCloud account - but you should be able to open an US-based one by setting your country to US when setting up the phone).
This is something a bit dangerous - the devices sold in China are slightly different despite being the same model as the US ones, I think they default to Chinese servers automatically regardless of account.
1 Like
Source?
(also stop tempting me to import a Chinese device just so I can experiment with it 
)
I don’t have a source for the server thing I have no idea where I read that. I purposely bought an American iPhone X so I can have the correct bands and so it wasn’t the Chinese one. A really obvious thing you can see from the Chinese one though despite being the same model is FaceTime Audio is removed entirely. No matter which SIM or where it’s activated all reference to FTaudio isn’t there and calls to that device just fail without any prompt to the user.
1 Like
This is actually a good sign, as they’d rather remove the functionality than silently compromise its security. Do they have iMessage? I’d expect it to get the same treatment then.
Also, since you seem to have experience on the matter - how hard is it to buy a non-chinese iPhone in China?
I wish that was true but VoIP calling in China is very much frowned upon and therefore was removed at the request of the government. That way all calls go over the MNOs or more likely over WeChat.
iMessage works fine and is on the devices but in China is very much not used.
But can’t you just install let’s say a SIP client or Signal and use it that way? Or do the networks try to block the ports used by SIP too?
Easy to nip to HK and buy one - they sell both models there. I got mine in the UK from eGlobalCentral. Bit of a risk but it came sealed. It’s clearly from Verizon though a Verizon SIM was already in the phone despite being factory sealed.
1 Like
I have a few A&A numbers that work fine there they don’t seem to block it. They’re only really into blocking the extremely popular services as it’s obvious what they are. They probably don’t know about A&A and there’s likely only to be a handful of users there so it will slip under the radar. They don’t explicitly block certain protocols though or else their local services wouldn’t work correctly I suppose.
1 Like
Cool. Just watch out as A&A doesn’t support SIP over TLS (nor media encryption) so your password was leaked in clear.
1 Like
So it’s not encrypted at all?
1 Like
What’s A&A?
Nope, media is in clear, password authentication uses “Digest” auth which is weak and can be brute forced.
@patrice58 Andrews & Arnold, an UK-based VoIP provider.
1 Like
Nice one. I was racking my brains over what it could be.
Do you know any other SIP providers that support 07 mobile numbers? I use it almost exclusively for this to make it easier to stay in touch. It does work well but I don’t know if any other company that can do it. I even would’ve used one of the MNOs but I don’t think there’s a comparable service now O2’s TuGo is dead.
Edit - I realise this is wildly off topic now
O2 TuGo was routing calls in clear somewhere to an Israeli company (I believe “TU” - the original company who provided the platform, is based there) last time I checked back in early 2016. Hardly better.
Simwood is quite decent and provides UK 07 numbers with SIP over TLS & SRTP.
Yeah, totally off-topic. Maybe the Coral Crew 
could move some posts? I believe we already have a thread about VoIP somewhere.
1 Like
I was tempted just to use my 3 SIM with a VPN and use WiFi Calling as it supports SMS correctly as well but it means dedicating a phone to it - it’s just an expensive route
Forgot to mention also if you buy a foreign phone to be delivered to China via post/courier it is either returned at the customs checks or destroyed. Next to impossible doing it this way.