Xiaomi managed to get some bad press of late, when a report from Taiwan claimed that the Chinese maker was gathering sensitive user data through its phones. The report said that Xiaomi Redmi Note was found to be sending information to Chinese servers without any such requests from the user.
This made the Chinese company respond to the image-shattering claims, and in a short duration of time. A software update announced by Xiaomi yesterday addresses the issue by making Cloud Messaging an opt-in feature rather than being automatically on.
Q: How does this relate to the privacy concerns raised about Xiaomi over the last 48 hours? What’s your response?
A: A recent article in Taiwan and a related report by F-Secure raised privacy concerns by stating that Xiaomi devices are sending phone numbers to Xiaomi’s servers. These concerns refer to the MIUI Cloud Messaging service described above. As we believe it is our top priority to protect user data and privacy, we have decided to make MIUI Cloud Messaging an opt-in service and no longer automatically activate users. We have scheduled an OTA system update for today (Aug 10th) to implement this change. After the upgrade, new users or users who factory reset their devices can enable the service by visiting “Settings > Mi Cloud > Cloud Messaging” from their home screen or “Settings > Cloud Messaging” inside the Messaging app — these are also the places where users can turn off Cloud Messaging.
– Xiaomi, via their public feeds
Xiaomi attributed to claims of data gathering to the Cloud Messaging app, which is a Xiaomi-specific feature that lets users connect for free via the service. In a time as critical as now, Xiaomi could really do without the bad press, which they hope is the result of this new update.