Xiaomi smartphones black listedSpying ChargesThe ReportFallout of the reportSo, why did Indian Air Force issue a notification against using Xiaomi phones?
Spying Charges
In August this year, F-secure released reports that they had found proof that Xiaomi handsets were sending data back to its company servers in China. They weren’t the first to figure it out though, a user named Kenny Li wrote in a Hong Kong forum that his Xiomi RedMi Note was sending pictures and messages to servers in China. Initially, the claim was refuted by saying that this was data being sent to the cloud backup servers. It was allegedly just a coincidence that the servers were located in China. To be fair, the service provider is allowed to decide on the location where backup data should be stored. Therefore, this user decided to root his phone and install a different ROM. and he still found data being sent to the same servers. This meant that it wasn’t the cloud service, but the phone hardware that was sending the data back to somebody who was really interested in collating such data.
The Report
Fallout of the report
What’s surprising is that the IAF notification seems to be hinting on the same report released by F-Secure in August to which the software security company had already confirmed that Xiaomi has rectified the issue and the company no longer breaches privacy. Now, there can be two situations- either, the privacy problem with Xiaomi has returned or the IAF notification is based on older reports. We believe it to be the latter, as no new reports have surfaced since the F-Secure clarification in September.
