We’ve all heard of the popular cell phone manufacturer from China – Yes, XIAOMI. According to the most recent allegations, Xiaomi has joined the “data theft” bandwagon that most smartphone manufacturers have been accused of recently.
The data was being collected under the claims that securing customer privacy is their “top priority”.
Forbes has reported that according to cybersecurity researcher Gabi Cirlig, most of the activities he was doing on his Xiaomi phone was being tracked and sent to a remote server for data collection.
Monitored activities included opening folders and swiping screens.
Cirlig told Forbes that he suspects other Xiaomi phones like the M10 and Redmi consist of privacy issues. Said encrypted information was decoded to readable format in no time.
How Xiaomi defends itself
Yahoo.com reported – “Xiaomi has reviewed a recent article by Forbes on our privacy policies and believes the reporting to be misrepresentative of the facts. At Xiaomi, our users’ privacy and security are of top priority,” the company said in its response to the Forbes article.
Apparently, Xiaomi defends itself by claiming that all data collection permissions are user approved and is anonymously used for internal purposes.
Not sure how much of that is true, assuming China is a hub for tech and software manufacturers always striving to understand consumer psychology when it comes to using smartphones.
