Many Chinese keyboard apps, some from major handset manufacturers, can leak keystrokes to determined snoopers, leaving perhaps three quarters of a billion people at risk according to research from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. As the Lab’s findings [PDF] explain, “There is no way to fit the tens of thousands of Chinese characters that exist onto a single keyboard.” Computers set for use by Chinese language speakers therefore employ “Input Method Editor” (IME) software , the most popular of which use the Pinyin scheme that makes it possible to represent the sounds of Mandarin using the Latin alphabet.

Source: The Register