Study reveals Android phones constantly snoop on their users

LASER_oneXM

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Feb 4, 2016
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A new study by a team of university researchers in the UK has unveiled a host of privacy issues that arise from using Android smartphones.
The researchers have focused on Samsung, Xiaomi, Realme, and Huawei Android devices, and LineageOS and /e/OS, two forks of Android that aim to offer long-term support and a de-Googled experience
The conclusion of the study is worrying for the vast majority of Android users .

No way to "turn it off"​

It is important to note that this concerns the collection of data for which there’s no option to opt-out, so Android users are powerless against this type of telemetry.
This is particularly concerning when smartphone vendors include third-party apps that are silently collecting data even if they’re not used by the device owner, and which cannot be uninstalled.

For some of the built-in system apps like miui.analytics (Xiaomi), Heytap (Realme), and Hicloud (Huawei), the researchers found that the encrypted data can sometimes be decoded, putting the data at risk to man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks.
 

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