BENGALURU (Aryavarth) The next war will be fought on many fronts, and military action is just one front. The other fronts are cyber warfare, public opinion internationally and international diplomacy. The People Liberation Army of China is globally known for scores of Human right abuses and funding technology companies to create a spy network. One of the companies that is under considerable international scrutiny is Huawei, and it is founded by Ex China People Liberation Army official and the expansionist Chinese Communist Party member.
Even though your Chinese phone, may not have any Chinese apps, firmware and background software can still communicate with Chinese servers and compromise India’s security. The Chinese are good at hiding malware in your brand new handset, you don’t even need to download an app to be spied on, by default they load this spying software on your phone, and you cannot delete them.
In 2016, 70 Crore Chinese Phones Had Spyware Installed to Track users.
In 2016, a globally renowned Mobile security firm Krytpowire found that up to 700 million lower-end Android devices had Chinese malware hidden as a preinstalled support app. This app had had access to mobile phone user’s text messages, chats, contacts, calls, location, and other data, and this data was then sent to servers to Shanghai, China. Once the Chinese thieves of personal data were caught, Shanghai Adups Technology Co., the company responsible for this, claimed it was only intended for the Chinese market, and the American phones were loaded with it only as a mistake.
Xiaomi Found Spying on People using Its Phone.
Xiaomi tries to tell people that it is an Indian company; it is a 100% Chinese company. After reading this incident, you will want to sell your Chinese handset or break it like many other Indians and upload the video on social media, who are standing with our 20 soldiers that were killed on the border brutally by cowardly and treacherous PLA.
Gabi Cirlig, seasoned cybersecurity researcher had bought a new Redmi Note 8 smartphone from Xiaomi. A news article was published by Thomas Brewster, Associate editor at Forbes, covering cybercrime, privacy, security and surveillance. Cirlig spoke to Forbes after discovering that his Redmi Note 8 smartphone was watching much of what he was doing on the phone.
When Cirlig surfed on the internet on the device’s default Xiaomi browser, it recorded all the websites he visited, including search engine queries whether with Google or the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo. Every item viewed on a news feed feature of the Xiaomi software. All his activities were tracked even when he was in private “incognito” mode. That data was then being transmitted to remote servers hosted by another Chinese tech giant, Alibaba, which were rented by Xiaomi.
Cirlig in the Forbes article also pointed out that “The device was also recording what folders he opened and to which screens he swiped, including the status bar and the settings page. All of the data was being packaged up and sent to remote servers in Singapore and Russia, though the Web domains they hosted were registered in Beijing.”
On Forbes’ request, Andrew Tierney, a renowned cybersecurity researcher, investigated this spying incident further. Mi Browser Pro and the Mint Browse, the browsers shipped by Xiaomi on Google Play, were collecting the same data. Combined these have more than 15 million downloads on Google Play.
Millions of people are being spied on by Xiaomi, according to the article on Forbes website. This issue is found across many other Xiaomi models, the Xiaomi MI 10, Xiaomi Redmi K20 and Xiaomi Mi MIX 3 devices were also found to transmit data to servers. Xiaomi was also found to be collecting data about the phone, including unique numbers for identifying the specific device and Android version. Cirlig said such “metadata” could “easily be correlated with an actual human behind the screen.”
Government of India has banned Some Xiaomi Apps
The Indian Government has recently announced that it has banned 59 mobile applications, including TikTok, WeChat, and Mi Community. The Ministry of Information Technology in a press release said, “It has received many complaints from various sources including several reports about the misuse of some mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India.” Among smartphone manufacturers, Xiaomi, saw some of its apps being banned,
For Your Safety, It’s time to boycott Chinese Mobile Phones.
China Under Chinese Communist Party and PLA is a bundle of lies and deceits, its crime book, human right abuses and illegal activities are like an onion when you are finished peeling one layer, and another will appear. Historically, the Chinese have mastered the art of deceit and their book “Art of War”, very carefully, teaches deceits and cheating. In future, Governments will discover that Chinese made phones have these kinds of spyware installed and ban the usage in national interest.
What is worrying that many government officials, defense and security personal may have these Xiaomi phones, the Government of India must immediately ban these phones for government officials and launch a cybersecurity enquiry. For an individual user, it’s better to stick to Samsung, LG, Apple, Sony, Pixel, Motorola or other foreign brands, to avoid your data being captured by Chinese servers. Xiaomi knows everything that you do, your secret WhatsApp messages, intimate private photos, bank account details and whatnot. You never know, hackers may even take hold of that data and start blackmailing you in future.