OnePlus brand smartphones are being accused of collecting personal data of users. The question is are all the phones from the company collecting the date or just some models. Read the article below for more details.
OnePlus brand collects specific usage data
OnePlus seems to meet a new trouble, as the company is facing the accusation of collecting specific usage data from its users. According to Christopher Moore, a security researcher, he discovered that his OnePlus 2 was sending specific user patterns to a company server without his permission. Moore first discovered this when he set up a security tool on his OnePlus 2. However, the tool found traffic requests to open.oneplus.net, which directed traffic to a US-based Amazon AWS server.
Moreover, he found out what kind of data had been collecting by this domain. The result was quite frustrating. The company has been collecting IMEI number, MAC addresses, mobile network names, Wi-Fi SSIDs, and the phone’s serial number. Furthermore, Moore noticed that the company was also collecting details such as which app the user opened and when the user launched or closed an app. Additionally, the time when you turn on or off your phone is one type of information the smartphone sends away.
After deeper investigation, the culprit responsible for data collection is a system app called “OnePlus System Service”. You can’t turn off the app since it is part of the System. However, you can disable the application when the phone restarts.
OnePlus brand’s answer for the problem
The Chinese company has responded to data collection concerns. The manufacturer said: “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. The second stream is device information, which we collect to provide better after-sales support.”. We hope OnePlus will soon fix the problem. Stay tuned for more updates from us.