It has been collecting data without your permission

Have you been enjoying your OnePlus device, with specs fit for a true flagship and a price way lower than most flagships out there? Or are you planning to purchase the upcoming OnePlus 5T in the near future? Well, we got a situation here: As much as OnePlus devices have been providing the best value-for-money, it is violating your privacy without you knowing it.

This alarming finding was discovered by UK-based security and tech blogger Chris Moore. In his detailed findings about OnePlus’ OxygenOS, he found out that aside from phone data (IMEI number, MAC Address, serial number, etc.), it also tracks the user’s application activities from usage timestamps, charging timestamps, and screen timestamps.

In his deep dive towards OnePlus’ security flaw, Moore found out that OnePlus Device Manager and OnePlus Device Manager Provider are the two apps collecting the said user data.

There’s a good news and bad news to this finding: The good news is that OnePlus users can permanently disable it without rooting, as pointed out by tech enthusiast Jakub Czeka?ski:

@chrisdcmoore I’ve read your article about OnePlus Analytics. Actually, you can disable it permanently: pm uninstall -k –user 0 pkg

— Jakub Czeka?ski (@JaCzekanski) October 10, 2017

Follow this tutorial https://t.co/Ha49DmktNH

— Jakub Czeka?ski (@JaCzekanski) October 10, 2017

The bad news–an alarming one in fact, is that OnePlus does not consider it a big issue. Tech blogs like Android Authority and Android Central tried to contact OnePlus, but ended up with an unsatisfactory explanation. Airing OnePlus’ side, the said collection of data is meant for them to provide better aftersales support to their users.

“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 behavior. This transmission of usage 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.” – OnePlus’ statement on the issue

While it may seem that their data collection has a purpose, not giving consent to users about this is bad and damaging to the company. Let’s hope OnePlus will address this matter seriously, beyond their PR-esque and generic statements, because it can be damaging to the company.

Source: Chris Moore