It looks like OnePlus keeping itself busy for all the wrong reasons recently. As of now, the company is being accused of sending data from their smartphones to their data centres anonymously. A security researcher found out that, his device OnePlus 2 device was sending specific users patterns to the companies server without asking any permission from the users.
Christopher Moore said that he spotted the device where the device was anonymously uploading the information like phone number, IMEI number, mobile serial number, MAC address, mobile network names, and battery status more. Here are the official comments from the blog of Christopher Moore.
“They’re collecting timestamped metrics on certain events, some of which I understand – from a development point of view, wanting to know about abnormal reboots seems legitimate – but the screen on/off and unlock activities feel excessive. At least these are anonymised, right? Well, not really – taking a closer look at the ID field, it seems familiar; this is my phone’s serial number,”
After this blog went viral, the OnePlus sent an official press statement stating the entire incident.
“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 behaviour. This transmission of user 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.”
Adding a word to the OnePlus’s comments, a user commented on the twitter that, one can completely disable, but the company should put a push a new Android update to push an update about to resolve this issue once in for all.
So, before setting up your device be sure to read all the terms and condition before accepting blindly, to have your data safe and secure.