Chinese smartphone market OnePlus seems to be collecting a lot of data from its smartphone users. The company is collecting data from its smartphones and transmitting it to a server along with each device’s serial number with it, according to security researcher Chris Moore.
In a January blog post, Moore stated how OnePlus devices running OxygenOS record data at various points. For example, when a user locks or unlocks the screen, when apps are opened, used, and closed, and the Wi-Fi networks the device connects to. All relatively standard.
In addition to that information, the company is collecting the phone IMEI, phone number, and mobile network names. This means that the data is identifiable to you personally and can be easily linked back. According to Moore, the code responsible for this data collection and transmission is part of OnePlus Device Manager and OnePlus Device Manager Provider. Moore says that in his case, the services had sent off 16MB of data in just 10 hours.
As expected, in a statement, OnePlus said that it does transmit analytics to an Amazon server in two streams. The first stream is for usage analytics to fine-tune its software. The second is device information, which it collects for after-sales support. The company did say that users are able to turn off the data collection by going to Settings, then Advanced, and deselecting the option in “Join user experience program.” Currently, there is no way to disable the second stream.
