Security researcher says that Redmi Note 8 has collected his private data

Redmi Note 8 is one of the best-selling Android smartphones in 2019. However, recently, a security researcher accused Xiaomi’s mobile phones and web browsers of collecting users’ private data, such as details of which apps and files were opened. In a blog post on Friday, Xiaomi responded that these statistics are for optimizing program response and performance, and do not involve identifiable identity information.

“MI” by Rik Oostenbroek is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Forbes quoted multiple security researchers as saying that the company was collecting network history and phone data, such as “unique numbers for identifying the specific device and Android version” that could be used to identify devices. A researcher explains that Redmi Note 8 smartphone “recorded all the sites he visited, including search engine queries” and “every item viewed on a news feed feature of the Xiaomi software.”

Even when browsing in incognito mode, this tracking does not seem to stop. In addition, there are open folders and screen sliding information, and these data are sent to the Alibaba Cloud server leased by the company.

However, Xiaomi argued that Forbes misunderstood the company’s data privacy principles and policies and denied any wrongdoing. Because only the user has enabled this feature in the settings, the history of the web browser will be synchronized.