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Update (04/05/20) – JB
After being in the middle of a privacy controversy with bad repercussions among users, Xiaomi promised to launch an update to stop collecting anonymous browsing data from its proprietary browsers. The information was confirmed yesterday (3).
Today (4), the Chinese giant has already started distributing the update through the Google Play Store. The update should launch an option for the user enables or disables data collection During incognito browsing:
The new feature is already present in the latest version of Mi Browser, Mi Browser Pro and Mint Browser. Combined, all three have 15 million users.
In its statement, Xiaomi also emphasizes that data collection should continue in standard navigation. Therefore, the novelty should apply only to anonymous browsing. To understand the case, just access the original text below:
Original text (03/05/20)
Introduced to users at the end of 2018, the Mint browser came into the hands of Xiaomi with the proposal of offering a lightweight, agile and secure browser, which seeks to compete with consolidated applications in the market such as Opera, UC Browser, FireFox and, obviously, Google Chrome on Android
However, in this short life of availability, the application has already credited a security flaw that would allow URL manipulation, which could confuse the user and now, the disclosure that the browser would be collecting navigation data.
According to the post originally posted on Forbes, the browser would collect all usage data within the app and refer it to remote servers, including websites visited with URLs, search queries, device metadata, and items seen in the news.
Most troubling in this disclosure was the perception that the data is not collected only during the “common” sessions of the application, but that the same data is identified in case of browsing the so-called “anonymous guide”, which in theory should provide more privacy to users.
Xiaomi takes a stand
With the appearance of the case, Xiaomi published certain information about what happened on its official blog, pointing out that the publication of the data would have been misrepresented and that Forbes would have misinterpreted the data provided. Also, according to the company, the privacy and security of users are priorities for the company and that the information obtained works to improve the performance of the browser.
In any case, Xiaomi has confirmed that it should soon make a new update available for Browser Mint and Browser Mi that will give the user the possibility to disable the collection of data from the added navigation, thus giving control over their data.
The expectation is that this new version will be sent to Google Play for approval today, and will then be available for download in the Google store.
Mint browser
Developer: Xiaomi Inc.
No fee
Size: 13MB
