OnePlus is no stranger to controversy, but this most recent news will surely land them in troubled waters again. It is being reported that OnePlus is mining personal data from smartphones without user consent. The report comes after an investigation by Christopher Moore, a security blogger in the UK, said that his OnePlus 2 was transmitting data to OnePlus.
More specifically, Moore stated on a post that OnePlus was getting his smartphone data through a HTTPS domain. This happened last year. Moore contacted OnePlus earlier this year asking for clarification only to be led into a rabbit hole.
The info that OnePlus is collecting starts with analytics like irregular device locks/unlocks, abnormal reboots, to the serious WiFi network details, MAC address, phone numbers and serial numbers too. Some online publications have quizzed OnePlus on the new controversy and below is the unsatisfactory answer:
We securely transmit analytics in two different streams over HTTPS to an Amazon server. The first stream is usage analytics, which we collect in order for us to more precisely fine tune our software according to user behavior. This transmission of usage activity can be turned off by navigating to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Advanced’ -> ‘Join user experience program’. The second stream is device information, which we collect to provide better after-sales support.
Thankfully, this analytics can be stopped via an adb command that doesn’t require root. So you just hook your phone to the PC, and run the following adb command: pm uninstall -k –user 0 pkg.
- Source:Â
- Chris’s Security and Tech Blog
- Via
- PhoneArena
