Chinese mobile phones collect large amounts of data
Published 2/7/2023

Buying an Android phone in China can be associated with the risk of it leaking large amounts of data that the user has neither given permission for nor is even aware of.

Haoyu Liu and Paul Patras at the University of Edinburgh, along with Douglas Leith at Trinity College Dublin, have looked at how some Android phones bought in China have pre-installed apps that share private data with third parties. The operating system also sends data.

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The study analyzed phones from three popular brands in China: OnePlus, Xiaomi and Oppo Realme and assumed that the user chose not to share data for analysis, nor to use cloud storage or other third-party services. It has also been assumed that the user has not created an account on platforms operated by the Android distributor.

The analyzes show that the phones send a "worrying" amount of personal data, both to the manufacturers and the network operators. Location data, various types of app usage data, and contact information are shared without consent, enabling tracking in multiple ways.

It is emphasized that tracking also continues when a device is taken abroad.

Disturbing image
Compared to phones bought within, for example, the EU, the number of pre-installed apps on the same models bought in China is three to four times as many with up to ten times as many permissions.

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It states that the study's findings paint a worrying picture of the state of user privacy in the world's largest Android market and highlight the urgent need for stricter privacy controls.