Manu Jain claims, not collecting users' data without their consent
Xiaomi has been accused of infringing on the privacy of its phone users by recording their "private" web and phone use habits.
Earlier, Forbes reported that one researcher Gabi Cirlig found that his Redmi Note 8 smartphone was watching almost everything that he was doing on the phone. Forbes asked another cybersecurity researcher, Andrew Tierney, to investigate the issues further, who allegedly found that browsers shipped by Xiaomi on Google Play -- Mi Browser Pro and the Mint Browser -- were recording the same data.
Manu Jain, Vice President, Xiaomi and Managing Director, Xiaomi India, said in a statement, "A news report claims that Mi Browser collects unnecessary information while browsing and sends the user data to other countries. This is incorrect and not true." Xiaomi said that its users' privacy and security are of top priority.
The company claims to strictly follow, and are fully compliant with user privacy protection laws and regulations in the countries and regions they operate in. While collecting user data is not unusual for Internet companies, they are supposed to do so with the permission of users in order to offer them better services. But the data is supposed to remain anonymised so that the identity of the user remains hidden.
In a separate blog post, Xiaomi said all collected usage data is based on permission and consent given explicitly by the users. Xiaomi said it hosts information on a public cloud infrastructure that is common and well known in the industry. Jain said that using Mi Browser or any Mi Internet product is perfectly safe and "we do not collect any information that the user has not given explicit consent to. All Mi Browser and Mi Cloud data of Indian users is stored locally in AWS servers in India."
See What’s Next in Tech With the Fast Forward Newsletter
Tweets From @varindiamag
Nothing to see here - yet
When they Tweet, their Tweets will show up here.