Xiaomi does not collect user data without their consent: Manu Jain

Xiaomi on Saturday refuted a news report that accused the company of infringing on the privacy of its phone users by recording their “private” habits of web and phone use. Citing cybersecurity investigators, Forbes reported this week that an investigator Gabi Cirlig discovered that his Redmi Note 8 smartphone was watching almost everything he was doing on the phone.

Forbes asked another cybersecurity investigator, Andrew Tierney, to further investigate the issues, which they allegedly discovered were that the browsers sent by Xiaomi on Google Play, Mi Browser Pro and Mint Browser, were recording the same data.

“A news report claims that My Browser collects unnecessary information while browsing and sending user data to other countries. This is incorrect and not true,” Manu Jain, Vice President, Xiaomi and Managing Director of Xiaomi India said in a statement. Xiaomi said that the privacy and security of its users are a top priority.

“We strictly follow and fully comply with user privacy protection laws and regulations in the countries and regions in which we operate,” the company emphasized.

While collecting user data is not unusual for Internet companies, it is supposed to be done with the permission of users to offer them better services. But the data is supposed to remain anonymous so that the identity of the user remains hidden.

In a separate blog post, Xiaomi said that all the usage data collected is based on the permission and consent explicitly given by our users. “In addition, we ensure that the entire process is anonymous and encrypted. The collection of aggregated statistical usage data is used for internal analysis, and we do not link any personally identifiable information to any of this data,” the company said.

Xiaomi said that it houses information about a public cloud infrastructure that is common and known in the industry. “All the information of our services and users abroad is stored on servers in several foreign markets where the laws and regulations of protection of the privacy of the local user are strictly followed and with which we fully comply,” he explained.

Jain said that using My Browser or any My Internet product is perfectly safe and “we do not collect any information to which the user has not given their explicit consent.” “All My Browser and Mi Cloud data from Indian users is stored locally on AWS servers in India,” he added.

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