Xiaomi
phones are a threat to security, alerts Indian Air Force
After a grand entry
into the Indian market earlier this year and making its
presence felt with unique flash sales and zero-advertising expenditure,
Xiaomi has now allegedly found itself embroiled in a new
controversy- snooping and stealing data. If the chatter online is to
be believed then Xiaomi has been accused by the Indian Air Force (IAF)
of sending user data to servers in remote located in China.
In fact, IAF is
also believed to have alerted all its Commands and Squadrons and suggested
that air force officers and their families should refrain from using
Chinese mobile devices. This isn’t the first time the Indian defense forces
have made such an accusation. The Indian Army had issued a
similar security alert against Chinese mobile applications. The Army claimed
that the location-sharing features of some of the applications may be
wrongly used to track and target people working in defence, research,
government sector and so on.
According to New Indian Express, the latest IAF alert note
reads, “F-secure, a leading security solution company, recently carried out a
test of Xiaomi Redmi 1s, the company’s budget smartphone, and found
that the phone was forwarding carrier name, phone number, IMEI (the device
identifier) plus numbers from address book and text messages back to Beijing.”
Talking about
incidents of Xiaomi devices sending user data to China, the note further states
that a Hong-Kong-based phone user has tested the Redmi Note and found that it
has been designed to automatically connect to an IP address that is hosted
somewhere in China. The data sent to the server includes media
storage and SMSes.
Xiaomi has faced
several allegations of security leaks in recent months. In August, the
Taiwanese government had started investigating whether Xiaomi is a cyber
security threat and said it will make a decision within three
months. The government had begun performing independent tests on Xiaomi
phones after reports about some models automatically sending user data back to
the firm’s servers in mainland China surfaced.
The note also cites Phonearena that
claims the Chinese government may be involved. “According to the
PhoneArena report, looking up the website of the company owning the IP address
in the range 42.62.48.0-42.62.48.255 reveals that the website owner is
www.cnnic.cn. CNNIC is the administrative agency responsible for Internet
affairs under the Ministry of Information Industry of People’s Republic of
China. It is based in the Zhongguancun high tech district of Beijing,” IAF adds
in the note.
Xiaomi has been
tight lipped and hasn’t commented on the matter yet. India is an extremely
crucial market for Xiaomi and the company has almost shed the Chinese brand image to woo audiences here. In a
very short span of time, the company has managed to sell well over
2,50,000 units here. In an earlier interview, Barra had said, “India as a market has a lot of
potential for smartphones, but it will probably take a couple of years for it
to reach this potential. It’s like quarter of a size of China’s smartphone
market or maybe even a fifth, so obviously there’s a long way to go.” If
the Xiaomi system turns out to have loopholes, it could be a huge setback for
the company’s image and obvious sales in India.
