After the rumors that the OnePlus company collects private data from their smartphone users, they finally issued a statement. The company admitted the deed and explained their reason behind it.
It was revealed that such collected data includes phone’s IMEI, phone numbers, MAC addresses, mobile network names, phone’s serial number and wireless network’s ESSID and BSSID. OnePlus then explained in their statement below that what they are doing is for better user experience and “enhance their software based on user behavior.”
Nonetheless, the Chinese company promises that they will stop collecting private data of users by the end of October. Aside from that, OnePlus also said that they will no longer collect other data like telephone numbers, MAC addresses, and Wi-Fi information. OnePlus also added that their next Oxygen OS update will have a prompt message for users if they still want to join the user experience program.
“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.”
