OnePlus Security News: Company Automatically Collects Users' Analytics; Learn How to Disable It
It was recently learned that OnePlus automatically collects analytics data from its users without initially asking for their permission. Some experts have offered ways on how to manually disable it.
United Kingdom-based software engineer Chris Moore recently published an article discussing at length how the Chinese smartphone maker was found automatically collecting analytics data from its customers.
Collecting these types of data is common not just in smartphones, but also in almost everything digital like computers, internet browsers and applications. In a way, these pieces of data are also needed by the developers to allow them to analyze a product's behavior in real-time. However, these data collection activities normally come with a prompt or a message that asks if the user is willing to participate in it.
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Moore narrated that he found several requests from a domain named "open.oneplus.net." While "oneplus.net" is the company's official site's domain name, he later found that the "open" prefix led to a facility of Amazon Web Services.
To sum up the kinds of data that OnePlus was collecting in real-time, Moore explained: "So it looks like they're collecting timestamped metrics on certain events, some of which I understand - from a development point of view, wanting to know about abnormal reboots seems legitimate - but the screen on/off and unlock activities feel excessive."
Initially, it was thought that users would need to root their device if they wanted to permanently stop OnePlus from automatically sending real-time data from their device.
However, another programmer -- @JaCzekanski on Twitter -- replied to Moore's social media post and informed everyone that the activity can be blocked by uninstalling the manufacturer's device manager program using the Android Debug Bridge without the need for root access.
On the other hand, OnePlus has already reacted to their customers' privacy and security concerns and told Android Police: "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."
Aside from the instructions provided by the above-mentioned security researchers, OnePlus suggested another way to stop the data collection by simply disabling it on Settings > Advanced > Join user experience program.
