OnePlus has been collecting your user data without permission; here’s how to disable it

OnePlus doesn’t have the cleanest reputation in the tech industry, as the company has previously been accused of manipulating benchmark scores with its handsets. It seems like the company is now facing a new hiccup as a software engineer has allegedly found that OnePlus has been collecting data from its smartphones without explicitly notifying users. This data is said to include IMEI numbers, phone numbers, mobile network names, and more.

Christopher Moore, the engineer who has claimed that OnePlus is constantly collecting user data, found out that his OnePlus 2 was sending across information including unusual reboots, screen on/off, and unlocks to open.oneplus.net. On deeper investigation, Moore found out that this domain points out to an Amazon AWS instance.

While you might think that screen lock/unlock and unexpected reboots is all harmless information that can help in fixing bugs, Moore found out that this was not the end of the story. Over a period of time, Moore figured out that OnePlus was collecting the handset’s IMEI number, phone numbers, MAC addresses, mobile network names, and IMSI prefixes. Apart from this, information on wireless network ESSID and BSSID and the phone’s serial number was also found to be collected by the company.

As you would probably have figured out already, all this data can easily help the company tie-up the usage information with individual users. The company was allegedly found collecting information on apps as well. This means that the handset was sending across information about the duration for which any app was used with the timestamp on top.

In a statement to Android Police on the issue, OnePlus said, “We securely transmit analytics in two different streams over HTTPS to an Amazon server. The first stream is usage analytics, which we collect in order for us to more precisely fine tune our software according to user behavior. This transmission of usage activity can be turned off by navigating to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Advanced’ -> ‘Join user experience program’. The second stream is device information, which we collect to provide better after-sales support.“

The culprit was found to be an app called OnePlus System Service. While the app can’t be disabled since it’s a system app, users can prevent it from collecting data by manually disabling it every time the phone is restarted.  

Twitter user @JaCzekanski has further pointed out that users can permanently disable OnePlus Device Manager through Android Debug Bridge (ADB) by running the following command:

pm uninstall -k –user 0 net.oneplus.odm

While the issue was discovered on a OnePlus 2 unit, the company’s response to Android Police pretty much confirms that OnePlus is collecting this data on all its devices. Considering that user privacy is a serious topic, it will be interesting to see if the company will release an official statement on the issue in coming weeks. 

Source, Via