ONEPLUS ACCUSED OF SPYING ON USER DATA

OnePlus has been pulled into the news lately for alleged claims of tracking user data. The popular smartphone manufacturer has been found to track crucial user identity information such as IMEI number, MAC addresses, mobile network names, Wi-Fi SSIDs and various serial numbers.

Chris D. Moore, a OnePlus 2 user, installed a security tool to track the inflow and outflow of data from hid device. He found that his OnePlus 2 was constantly reaching out to open.oneplus.net, which in turn diverted traffic to an Amazon server in the US. Not only that, upon further inspection, Chris found that OnePlus was even tracking the number of times he was unlocking or locking his phone. Fearing that, he immediately posted the issue on Twitter with screenshots. And OnePlus immediately replied with an official statement to justify what Chris had discovered.

OnePlus stated the following — “We securely transmit analytics in two different streams over HTTPS to an Amazon server. The first stream (first case of data transmission) is usage analytics, which we collect in order for us to more precisely finetune 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 (tracking of locking and unlocking) is device information, which we collect to provide better after-sales support.”