Surprise! China's top Android phones capture far more data 72 remark bubble on white

 Surprise! China's top Android phones capture far more data 72 remark bubble on white

It's best to reconsider bringing home a cheap OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo, or Realme handset after your vacation.

Experts advise against purchasing an Android phone in China because they come preloaded with apps that send sensitive data to third-party domains without approval or notification.

Haoyu Liu (University of Edinburgh), Douglas Leith (Trinity College Dublin), and Paul Patras (University of Edinburgh) conducted the study, which suggests that private information leakage poses a serious tracking risk to mobile phone customers in China, even when they travel abroad to countries with stronger privacy laws.

The authors of a paper titled "Android OS Privacy Under the Loupe - A Tale from the East"The trio of university researchers examined the Android system apps installed on three prominent smartphone suppliers in China: OnePlus, Xiaomi, and Oppo Realme.

To eliminate user-installed software, the researchers focused on information delivered by the operating system and system programmes. They presume that users have opted out of analytics and personalization, that they do not utilise cloud storage other optional third-party services, and that they have not registered an account on any platform owned by the Android distribution's creator. A reasonable policy, although it does not appear to be very effective.

The programmes that come pre-installed are made up of Android AOSP packages, vendor code, and third-party software. According to the report, each Android device with Chinese software has more than 30 third-party packages.

On the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11, they include Chinese input applications such as Baidu Input, IflyTek Input, and Sogou Input. Baidu Map is a front navigation app for the OnePlus 9R and Realme Q3 Pro, and the AMap package runs continually in the background. In addition, the Chinese firmware includes a number of news, video streaming, and online shopping apps.

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Within this narrow scope, the researchers discovered that Android devices from the three identified vendors "transfer a concerning quantity of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) not just to the device vendor but also to service providers such as Baidu and Chinese mobile network operators."

Even when these network operators were not providing service - no SIM card was present or the SIM card was connected with a different network operator - the tested phones did so.

"The data we see being transmitted includes persistent device identifiers (IMEI, MAC address, and so on), location identifiers (GPS coordinates, mobile network cell ID, and so on), user profiles (phone number, app usage patterns, app telemetry), and social connections (call/SMS history/time, contact information, and so on)."According to the researchers' publication.

"When this information is combined, it creates major dangers of user deanonymization and widespread surveillance, especially because every phone number in China is recorded under a citizen ID."

According to the researchers, whenever the preinstalled Settings, Note, Recorder, Phone, Message, and Camera apps are opened and used, the Redmi phone sends post requests to the URL "tracking.miui.com/track/v4". Data is sent even if users opt out of "Send Usage and Diagnostic Data" during device startup.

The researchers claim that data collecting from these devices does not change when the devices leave China, despite the fact that states outside of the Middle Kingdom have more stringent data protection policies. According to the researchers, this means that the cited phone providers and certain third-party suppliers may monitor Chinese visitors and students overseas and learn about their international interactions.

Another result of the study is that third-party applications are three to four times more prevalent on Chinese Android releases than on basic Android from other countries. In addition, these apps receive eight to ten times the number of permissions for third-party apps as Android releases from outside China.

"Overall, our findings paint a troubling picture of the state of user data privacy in the world's largest Android market," the researchers write. "They highlight the urgent need for tighter privacy controls to increase ordinary people's trust in technology companies, many of which are partially state-owned."