The 小米 XiaoMi and 紅米 RedMi phones have been hot sellers in China and in South East Asia lately. Most of it are sold out in seconds on their website which operates only for 5 minutes per week. The proclaimed sales is largely due to it’s low price and better specifications than the competitors.
Lately, a Taiwanese internet media has uncovered that the RedMi Note is actually sending data back to a server hosted in China behind the scenes.
A Hong Kong discussion group IMA Mobile user Kenny Li discovered that his RedMi Note has been connecting to an IP address in China and transferring data back to the server when he is operating in Wi-Fi mode. When he is on 3G, it is just a handshake (low data transmission).
So what is being sent to the servers? What surprises the tester is that even if you root the phone and flash it with another firmware, the background transmission continues. It seems that the process is hard coded into the phone.
According to his observation, the RedMi seems to be sending pictures from MEDIA STORAGE. On top of that, your SMS and messages also gets channeled through the Chinese servers. It looks like XiaoMi is ‘helping’ users to automatically make a backup of your data on their servers without explicit permission from the user.
* The micloud service was never turned on during the test.
| Current IP Range: |
42.62.48.0 – 42.62.48.255 |
 |
| IP Range Location: | China, Beijing, Beijing | |
| IP Owner: | Forest Eternal Communication Tech. Co.ltd | |
| Owner Full IP Range: |
42.62.0.0 – 42.62.127.255
|
|
| Owner Address: | Beijing, China | |
| Owner Country: | China | |
| Owner Phone: | +86-010-51659311 | |
| Owner Website: | www.cnnic.cn | |
| All Owner IP Ranges: | 42.62.0.0 – 42.62.127.255, 125.254.128.0 – 125.254.191.255, 124.243.192.0 – 124.243.255.255 | |
| All Owner IP Reverse DNS (Host)s: | 42.62.0.45, 125.254.166.0, 124.243.198.166 | |
| Whois Record Updated: | 29 Jun 2011 |
Worth pointing out that the user can just be an astroturfer (search for it). They are from Taiwan – home of HTC – who are in direct competition with the likes of Xiaomi
Please read more about it here, this is not true: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Internet_Network_Information_Center
aww it says , google removed cinic’s root certificate .lol that’s gotta hurt! :p stop suking chinese dik! xD they are bunch of thieves and socialist totalitarian scu mm!!
i wonder why there people so idiot to believe everything ther read.
IS SENDIND DATA FOR AN CLOUD SERVICE FROM YOU, THAT’ ALL.
There is no provacy problem, no more than Apple, Google, Microsoft.
dont’ be stupid
Chinese govt. is more evil than google, microsoft. dow you know every chinese firm even needs license to open a website!! fuck them ain’t got no freedom. you will notice they have to show their license number with their shit socialist govt. logo at the bottom of every site (footer).
Sir, please learn a bit more about Android. You can replace the Firmware, replace the recovery, even the boot loader and nothing from the OEM will be left on the device, so a paragraph like “that surprises the tester is that even if you root the phone and flash it with another firmware, the background transmission continues” is simply not true. If you’re so sure that it’s doing what you’re mentioning, just install Titanium backup and freeze the app or remove the APK from /data/system or /data. Thats it.
If you expect every tom dick and harry to do that then you are definitely not from this world. We all know what to do to absolutely stop an app from sending Private Data. But to hard code and making it really difficult to stop such an activity is definitely only a crooks job.
I wonder why would anyone bother to buy a cheap phone that compromise privacy?
Are you guys able to find the SAR rating of this phone? Is this phone EC and FCC approved ? How high or low is the radiation level?
no ideas. maybe it is because it is cheap.