What Your Phone May Give Away

When popular Chinese handset maker Xiaomi Inc admitted that its devices were sending users' personal information back to a server in China, it prompted howls of dissent and an investigation by Taiwan's government. The matter has also drawn attention to just how little we know approximately what goes on between our smartphone and the external universe. In short, it might be in your pouch, but you don't call the shots.


As long as a device is switched on, it could be communicating with at least three different masters: the company that constructed it, the telephone company it connects to, and the developers of any third party applications you installed on the device - or were pre-established before you purchased it. All these societies could have programmed the device to send data 'back home' to them over a wireless or cellular network - with or without the user's knowledge or consent. In Xiaomi's case, as presently as a user booted up their device, it started posting personal data 'back home'.

All these societies could have programmed the device to send data 'back home' to them over a wireless or cellular network - with or without the user's knowledge or consent. In Xiaomi's case, as presently as a user booted up their device, it started posting personal data 'back home'. Xiaomi said this was to allow users to transmit SMS messages without delivering to pay operator charges by routing the messages through Xiaomi's servers. To answer that, the company said, it needed to know the contents of users' address books.

Mikko Hypponensaid what Xiaomi did originally was clearly wrong: they were collecting your address book and charging it to themselves without you ever agreeing to it. Xiaomi is by no way only in grabbing data from your telephone set as soon as you switch it on. A cellular operator may collect data from you, ostensibly to improve how you stick up your phone for the first time, says Bryce Boland, Asia Pacific chief technology officer at FireEye, an internet security firm. Handset makers, he said, may as well be collecting information, from your location to how long it takes you to fix up the phone.

Many carriers, for example, include in their terms of service the right to accumulate personal information about the device, data processor and online activities - including what web sites users visit. Single case study by Hewlett-Packard and Qosmos, a French internet security company, was capable to track individual devices too, for instance, identify how many Facebook messages a user sent. The goal: using all this data to pitch users highly personalized ad. But some users fear it's not just the carriers collecting such detailed data.

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