Xiaomi Phones Secretly Sending Users' Sensitive Data to Chinese Servers

Chinese telecoms equipment suppliers have previously been criticized by some countries due to suspected backdoors in its products, and if United States has banned its several major government departments, including NASA, Justice and Commerce Departments, from purchasing Chinese products and computer technology, then they are not wrong at all.

In the latest claim against Chinese smartphone manufacturers is the allegation that the popular Chinese smartphone brand, Xiaomi has been suspected of “secretly” stealing users’ information — including SMS messages and photos —from the device without the user's permissions and sending it back to a server in Beijing, despite of turning off the data backup functions, according to Apple Insider.

 

Security Researchers from F-Secure Antivirus firm has shown that the Xiaomi phones (RedMi 1S handset) send quite a lot of personal and sensitive data to "api.account.xiaomi.com"  server located in China, including following information:

• IMEI Number of your phone
• IMSI Number (through MI Cloud)
• Your contacts and their details
• Text Messages

China-based smartphone company Xiaomi recently marked a successful entry into the Indian market this month. Earlier this year, the company also announced its Redmi Note, which, just like Xiaomi’s other handsets, was an affordable with almost all features that an excellent smartphone provides. However, the handset might be doing more than what it has been advertised.

Kenny Li of Hong Kong forum, IMA Mobile, recently noticed something odd with its Redmi Note smartphone. He discovered that the device continued to make connections with IP addresses in Beijing, China. The device kept trying to make the connection, even after switching off the company's iCloud-like MiCloud service.

Although it was pointed out that the transmissions occur only over Wi-Fi, though the device does stay in contact with the servers via small "handshakes" while using cellular data. Li then tried erasing the version of Android and installed a new version of Android, But the problem still persisted.