Twitter User Claims Oxygen OS Sends Data To China
Amid fierce competition, OnePlus is being alleged of transmitting user’s data from clipboard to China. According to a post on Twitter, OnePlus identifies and uploads user’s personal data from clipboard including bank account details and sends it to a server in China. The company has rubbished the allegation and the said code was not functional for its users based outside of China.
The fresh issues are brought to light within days following company’s confirmation of the breach of credit of around 40,000 OnePlus users globally.
Elliot Alderson, Fresh Security investigator claimed that OxgenOS contained a file named badword.txt, through which the company captures sensitive data from clipboard and transmits it to a server in China. The text file comprised of keywords namely Vice President, Chairman, Deputy Heads, Associate Professor and more. Furthermore, a zip file named pattern is created which has several text files such as end.txt, start.txt, bracket.txt, key.txt, badword.txt which are used in a sneaky way to transmit data to TeddyMobile, a research company in ChinaThrough the file, the company is sending IMEI details and information of phone company to Teddymobile’s server.
Refuting the allegations, the company said that though the file does exist, it is blacklisted and there is no iota of truth that users information is being sent to the Chinese server. The code is non functional for its operating system for global users. In a statement it said that the company does not send any data without consent from its users in OxygenOS.
OnePlus also maintains that company’s operating system for China HydrogenOS has a folder that weed out competitors and blocks them, for example—WeChat. This they say is the proof that the process of filtering is restricted only to China and not to other countries.
Meanwhile, it is clear that user data is secured and not sent to any server based in China.
