Is Temu A Scam? Unveiling The Dark Side Of This Chinese Shopping App

timu is the second most popular shopping app in the US behind only Amazon why because everything you can buy on Teemu is dirt cheap from five dollar shoes to a Nintendo switch for only seven dollars these deals seem too good to be true but are they the truth is is that most of us know very little about the app's Origins now recently Kim Commando a cyber security writer from USA Today wrote a scathing review stating that Teemu is collecting tons of data from you and selling your info to China for bargains then she went on to say delete the app the bargains are just not worth it what's up everyone my name is Steve Chu and I run a seven figure eCommerce store over at Bumblebee linens.com and a seven figure e-commerce blog over at my wifecoderjob.com I'm also the author of The Wall Street Journal best-selling book The Family First entrepreneur if you're interested in learning how to start your own online store sign up for my free 6 day mini course below now as part of running my eCommerce store I've been importing products from China for over 15 years so so I thought that I would chime in and give you my personal take on the Teemu app is timu the popular new shopping app from China just a glorified Chinese spy app and are the bargains too good to be true now from privacy concerns to potential security breaches I will dissect everything that you need to know cut through the rumors and get down to the hard facts now I've done a lot of research talked to some of my buddies in the tech space and even bought from temu to give you a balanced insightful analysis so buckle up and let's decrypt the truth behind timu now first off what is timu timu is a us-based Online Marketplace that offers extremely low prices on thousands of products shipped directly from China now the company is a subsidiary of PDD Holdings which is a Chinese company that is publicly traded on the NASDAQ now the name timu means team up price down which reflects the company's philosophy of reducing the prices for its most popular products the more people who use Teemu to buy a specific product the more of that product the seller will manufacture which in turn will reduce the price for everyone as a result the most purchased items are tumu are also the cheapest ones now as of this recording timu has a 2.41 customer rating out of five on the Better Business Bureau a 3.2 rating out of 5 on trustpilot and a 3.35 star rating on site jabber not that great but before we get into the spyware and conspiracy theories let's first talk about how Teemo can possibly be so cheap now according to timu their low prices are achieved because they have a deep network of merchants logistic partners and an established ecosystem of suppliers now teamu's sister company pin dordo the equivalent of timu in China was originally created to leverage social shopping with Team purchasing to get lower prices for consumers basically they cut out the middleman gather a bunch of orders of the same product from the masses and place a really large order at really low prices by leveraging economies of scale but personally I don't buy it and here's why in 2022 most of Pandora's Revenue came from online marketing services and not e-commerce in fact pindo Dua sells advertising services to its network of merchants and not so much physical products Merchants can bid for keywords that match product listings and appear as ads on Pandora's platform pindodo also charges Merchants a commission on each item sold through its platform in addition Pandora generates revenue from transaction fees and merchandise sales in fact here is a breakdown opens Revenue sources online marketing Services was 72 percent of the revenue transaction fees were 18 and merchandise sales were only 10 percent in other words pindo and its sister company tumu are really in the business of collecting data just use some common sense here the main reason Teemu is the number two app on the app store is because they are practically giving away merchandise in order to make their app popular and ubiquitous now if you look online you'll notice that most people aren't paying that much money at all for their products because Teemu has an ingenious marketing campaign that pays you cash for referring your friends to sign up the more installs of the app you refer the more money that you make Teemo has also been investing heavily into the influencer marketing space to the point where I've started to doubt the validity of any of the videos or tick tocks or Instagram reels or even comments about Teemu I've seen online for example I published this video here about Teemu and I'd say that 80 of the comments about the platform are overwhelmingly positive there are literally people gushing about how amazing it is to shop on their platform now I've been creating content for a very long time and it's rare to see people gush like this people are more likely to post comments when they are unhappy about a service but not when something works as advertised so this leads me to believe that they have hired people to leave positive comments about their platform on all major social media outlets now personally I've been offered four figures to publish a single video about Teemu and I've never once accepted any money from them I've also been offered hundreds of dollars just to post a short Tick Tock it's pretty nuts they are literally spending massive marketing dollars to make temu a household name but remember merchandise is only 10 of pindodo's business in China and Teemo is not going to be any different basically Teemo is a subsidized loss leader in order to gain market share so they can collect information to sell their marketing Services Amazon did the same thing for a very long time so did Uber Lyft in the Rideshare space now according to Joseph's kazukanis there's absolutely no way timu runs a profitable retail business they are effectively buying market share and hoping in the years to come that market share will stick so bottom line Teemu is not really an e-commerce company they are an information company and they are following in the exact same footsteps of their sister company pindodo in China now with all that information in mind let's now talk about whether Teemu is in fact a spyware app designed to spy on Americans from China now as I mentioned earlier Kim Commando on USA Today flat out said the following in not so many words the prices are low because the goods are cheap what you see isn't necessarily what you get Teemo is a communist china-based app and site and as you shop timu monitors your activity on other apps tracks your notifications locations and can potentially change the settings on your phone but is this really true well it is 100 true that the Teemo app flat out gathers a ton of data about your phone usage habits including your name address and phone number as well as any details about you such as your birthday photos and social media profiles you're also giving up your phone's OS your IP address and GPS location potentially in any and all browsing and shopping data now what does this really mean basically timu collects data from your sessions in search history and monitors your activity and time on site if you log in using social media it collects information contained in your social media profile as well but can it really gather more than that and is all of your data making it back to China now first off even though it says that Timo is based in Boston Massachusetts which implies that Teemo is an American company it really isn't timu's parent company PDD Holdings is a Cayman Islands company with subsidiaries registered in China so basically Timo is a Chinese company now I definitely cannot say whether timu is passing your data back to China but I'm willing to bet that the answer is yes because PDD Holdings teemo's owner doesn't have the best track record according to CNN the pin dildo app tmu's sister company was called for having malware that exploited vulnerabilities in the Android operating system company insiders said the exploits were utilized to spy on users and competitors allegedly to boost sales now according to Mikko hyponen Chief research officer with with secure he was quoted as saying we haven't seen a mainstream app like this trying to escalate their privileges to gain access to things that they're not supposed to gain access to This is highly unusual and it's pretty damning for pindo duo now these findings follow Google's suspension of pindodoir from its Play Store in March of 2023 citing malware identified in various versions of the app an ensuing report from Bloomberg said a Russian cyber security firm has also identified potential malware in the app now these vulnerabilities allow the app to gain full access to your contacts calendars and photo albums plus your social media accounts chats and texts in other words almost everything on your phone now CNN reports that by collecting expansive data on user activities the company was able to create a comprehensive portrait of users habits interests and preferences which allowed pembrado to improve its machine learning model to offer more personalized push notification and ads attracting users to open the app and place orders now the million dollar question is does Teemu do this so far there's no evidence of it but again PDD Holdings has shown that they are capable of doing this but does any of this really matter since you're just getting free stuff online and saving money well ultimately Teemu is a legitimate company whose parent company pde Holdings is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ they don't have the best reviews online but it is a real company that ships real Goods technically buying from Teemu is 100 safe because the company offers a purchase protection program that protects buyers in case it damaged goods or fraud the Teemu Protection Program covers items that don't match a listing description items that arrive damaged and items that are lost in the mail now reports have shown that getting a refund from temu can sometimes take a long time but it does in fact happen so what is the big deal in the grand scheme of things well here's how I see it having shopped on tumu 90 of the products sold on the platform are just cheap Chinese junk that isn't branded if you were to ever visit China yourself you'd see these types of cheap products being sold everywhere and they are not built to last now as an American we are used to overpaying for stuff so the low prices can come across as a huge shock most of the sellers on Teemu are not professional companies they are what pindo odor calls farmer Merchants now according to their SEC filing small-scale farmers in China have traditionally relied heavily on layers of Distributors to Market and sell their products to the broader consumer base which is highly inefficient we believe our team purchase model provides an alternative solution the larger man helps Farmers directly sell to Consumers without going through layers of Distributors thereby improving the overall supply chain and reducing costs so basically a farmer Merchant is essentially like a mom-and-pop shop which is why quality varies so much on the platform now should you care about being spied on if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture selling off your data to China for cheap junk will have a negative long-term effect on Commerce in the United States so if you can afford to buy real high quality products from real Merchants that are built to last I say think twice before you use the timu app now that you know about Teemu make sure you watch this video here about AliExpress which is another alternative to tumu when buying and selling online

Channel: MyWifeQuitHerJob Ecommerce Channel

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Id: gSh-aV1CK9Q

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 17 2023