OnePlus has admitted that the clipboard app in a beta build of its Android OS was beaming back mystery data to a cloud service in China.
Someone running the latest test version of OnePlus’s Oreo-based operating system revealed in its support forums that unusual activity from the builtin clipboard manager had been detected by a firewall tool.
Upon closer inspection, the punter found that the app had been transmitting information to a block of IP addresses registered to Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce and cloud hosting giant.
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This should not come as much of a shock to those who follow the China-based OnePlus. In October last year, researchers discovered that OnePlus handsets were collecting unusually detailed reports on user activities, although the manufacturer said at the time it was only hoarding the data for its internal analytics. One month later, it was discovered that some phones had apparently been shipped with a developer kit left active, resulting in the phones sporting a hidden backdoor.And lest we forget, today’s desktop and mobile operating systems are pretty gung-ho in phoning home information about their users, with Microsoft catching flak for Windows 10 telemetry in particular. ®
Source: OnePlus Android mobes’ clipboard app caught phoning home to China
Robin Edgar
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