The Chinese vendor Xiaomi managed to garner immense popularity in India within a short timeframe, but that does not mean that the vendor was not subjected any criticism. Xiaomi was under the fire regarding security issues and concerns for user data being sent to servers in China. As the relationship between India and China is not too smooth, there is no wonder for the Indian Air Force (IAF) to be concerned about the Indian users data being used to spy.
Adding to the fire, the claim of user data being sent to servers in China was confirmed by F-Secure and it revealed that the Redmi 1S, that has been launched in the country for Rs. 5,999 is sending user data back to the vendor's servers in China. Consequently, the IAF had to advice not to purchase or use any Xiaomi smartphone.
Now, Xiaomi has released an official statement regarding privacy concern criticism surrounding its offerings. It has claimed that the Xiaomi services are opt-in features and that they will not activate without the prior permission of the users. Also, it is stated that the vendor does not collect the user data without permission and users can choose to disable these services as they want and it will delete their data.
Furthermore, all the data is encrypted and securely stored that even the Xiaomi employees cannot decrypt them even if they manage to access the hard drives. Xiaomi is now in the process of moving the Indian user data from Beijing data centers to Amazon AWS data centers in Singapore and the USA. Parts of this migration that debuted earlier this year will get over by end of this month, while it will be completely done by the year end. Also, the vendor will be setting up a data center in India for the users in the country in the next year.
Lastly, Xiaomi claims to have addressed those issues raised by F-Secure about the Redmi 1S and this was acknowledged by the latter as well. These details were posted by Hugo Barra on Google+ confirming the migration of data from servers out of China to India.
It is believed that Xiaomi’s statement should put the security concerns to rest, however other than the government personnel in India none others were concerned about this issue.
To be updated...