The study claimed that smartphone companies such as Xiaomi, OnePlus, Realme and OPPO collect a lot of sensitive information about their users through their operating systems and the apps that come pre-installed on their smartphones in China. Researchers are concerned that devices send worrying amounts of personally identifiable information (PII) not only to the device vendor but also to service providers like Baidu and Chinese mobile network operators as many other private actors are also siphoning off the data.
What did the researchers say?
There is undoubtedly work to be done by the researchers to protect the privacy of Chinese users, the report said. The researchers, including Haoyu Liu of the University of Edinburgh, said their findings paint a troubling picture of user data privacy in the world’s largest Android market. He also mentioned that tighter privacy controls are needed to help people trust technology companies, many of which are partially owned by the government.
what was the experiment?
The researchers tried several devices purchased from Chinese manufacturers and performed network analysis to find out how much critical data was being leaked. He assumed that the person using the device would be a “privacy-conscious consumer” who had stopped sending analytics and personalization data to providers and did not use cloud storage or “any other alternative third-party services”.
According to the study, the PII collected includes contacts, phone numbers, phone and text metadata, geolocation data, sensitive information such as persistent device identifiers (IMEI and MAC addresses, advertising IDs and others), and basic user information such as phone numbers.
