Temu is an online shopping store that customers use to shop for various products. Temu mainly gets their products from China, the biggest manufacturing nation in the world. The most notable products that Temu has to offer are copies of popular items sold at much cheaper prices. Even though this may seem to be a great deal for those who are frequent shoppers, there is a darker side of Temu that not many know about.
Temu on the surface disguises itself as a friendly app where users can shop for anything they would like with the click of a button. Though this front puts Eagle High students who shop on the site and other shoppers at risk. According to topclassactions.com, Temu is being investigated for potential data breaching, which means that the company that owns Temu, PDD holdings, is potentially using the app as a front for selling user’s data. This data gets sold to third-party companies who use it for user passwords, to phone numbers or even a full name. Students brought up their opinions about their data potentially being sold.
“It’s not okay, it’s a cross country database. They don’t say much about what they’re doing with your data. And there’s also no obligation for them to tell you,” said sophomore Kash Howard. Some students are just now becoming aware of the situation and how it could affect them.
“I don’t support it. That’s why I’ve never liked Temu, there’s always a catch. I’m not surprised really,” said junior Uri Nielsen. Nielsen had been considering using Temu after the wave of popularity it has received in the past year. Temu, in September 2022, had a gross merchandise volume of 3,000,000 dollars, but since June of 2023, it has skyrocketed to 1,000,000,000 dollars according to businessofapps.com
Not only is Temu under fire for data breaching, but the site has been heavily criticized for their reliability. The way Temu conducts business is by outsourcing, with that, Temu isn’t reliable for what a customer’s package looks like or the quality of the item they purchased. According to cbsnews.com, various customers that had purchased items off Temu weren’t satisfied with their order, because the product they bought didn’t hold up after a short amount of time. With the complaints being given about products, people question the reliablity of what they are buying on Temu.
Temu, although being a very cheap and affordable website, has definite controversy surrounding it with issues that put Eagle High students and users of the shopping site at risk of getting their data stolen and sold to third-party companies that they would have no awareness about.
