Who/How do you test if your phone is sending out unwanted spy data?

[enginestar]

Chinese Phones: some phones have been banned or boycotted in USA for alleged spying or other unwanted acts...

Just wondering... who figures this out?
How do you figure out?
What kind of tests do you run to determine?

Sending out bulk data - this would be easy to detect and test for.

But if capturing username and passwords and the odd screen shot... well this would be a lot harder to detect?

Impossible?

They wouldn't just send out in plain text - they would encrypt and send out.
Doesn't even have to go back to China. Could simply go back to a server somewhere else (which then sends).

I'm picking on China... could be some other bad guy like Russia - or could be the big bad guy USA.

Just wondering.

 

[Rukbat]

Chinese Phones: some phones have been banned or boycotted in USA for alleged spying or other unwanted acts...

Wrong. The "unwanted acts" were sales embargoes. They sold to companies that were on the "don't sell to" list. That has nothing to do with their phones.

About the only phone to have something in that you don't want was s few Coolpads (only ones made for the Chinese market) that had an ad app renamed so it looked like a system app. It brought in ads, it didn't send anything out.

If you see data you didn't use, that's a good sign, though - so keep the phone in airplane mode for a while and if it's still sending out data, it's not only spying on you, it's making you break the law. (If you're on a plane, or near a blasting site, transmitting anything is illegal and, near a blasting site, dangerous.)

There's no confirmed report of a phone - as it comes from the manufacturer - with spyware. Lots of rumors, lots of FUD, but no confirmed reports.