“I am an employee, but I feel hugely responsible for whatever happens overall at Xiaomi. Especially Xiaomi India. I feel that I own… I am responsible for this company.” This was Manu Kumar Jain, the Managing Director of Xiaomi India in one of his interviews last year. And if he is a man of his words and actually meant every word of his statement then he should immediately resign from his power-position. After news of the Chinese giant Xiaomi outsourcing its user’s data (including Indian users) to China through Jack Ma’s Alibaba and its servers came out, the company has lost the trust of its loyal members and therefore calls have been increasing, demanding that Manu Kumar step down.
Forbes came out with an exclusive story a few days back where Xiaomi, the largest selling smartphone brand in India, has been accused of sending private user data to the servers in its home country, China.
As per the report, Xiaomi is sending all the private data of users to servers hosted by Alibaba. The search data is reaching the Chinese tech giant even if the user browses in incognito mode. “It’s a backdoor with phone functionality,” said Gabi Cirlig, a cybersecurity researcher. “My main concern for privacy is that the data sent to their servers can be very easily correlated with a specific user,” he warned.
Researchers also found that even searches on the so-called privacy-centric DuckDuckGo web browser were being sent to China. Forbes cited multiple security researchers who said that the company was collecting information on unique numbers identifying a device as well as the version of Android it is running. The phone also reportedly recorded things like folders that were opened and screen swipes.
Xiaomi came out with a rather funny response where it agreed to the fact that while it was collecting browsing data, that data was anonymized. While Xiaomi pandered its version of the story, Forbes stated that it took cybersecurity researchers a mere few seconds to decode the information, which was encoded by a method called base64.
The detailed list of information that Xiaomi has on users can be quite surprising and uncomfortable for many people in a time when the matter of online privacy is all the news.
India is the second-largest smartphone market of the world and Xiaomi has made a major chunk of its fortunes from the smartphone sales in the country. Therefore, the breach of privacy by Manu Kumar led Xiaomi India is a big concern for India as every third or fourth young user has a Xiaomi Smartphone in their hand.
Xiaomi phones do not operate properly until the user logs in the MI account—as a result, the user is forced to log into it and consequently the company can access all the data of the users.
The friendly face of Manu Kumar has been a façade of Xiaomi’s sinister data-mining attempts for the last ten years in India. After coming under the scanner, Manu Jain has been in a crisis-averting mode. In an attempt to win the goodwill of the consumer and the top authorities, he announced via a video conference call on Monday that if the government wants, the company will pre-install the Arogya-Setu app in its new phones.
This is not the first time Xiaomi has been accused/caught in data theft. Earlier in 2014, a cybersecurity firm F-Secure found that Xiaomi phones send all the information stored in the phone, like contact number, messages, and IMEI number of a handset to server in China.
Manu has been closely involved in Xiaomi India’s affairs from the year 2014 and therefore it would be ludicrous to say that he did not know about Xiaomi’s evil malpractices. Manu has been selling the phones with the USP that Xiaomi smartphones are made in India and therefore it is Indian at heart. But what has been happening behind the curtains is worrying for everybody.
In the day and age when privacy is one of the prized commodities of an individual, Xiaomi has been openly flouting the laws. It is high time that Manu Kumar takes responsibility for the pandemonium that has ensued since the report came out and resign while still having his respect intact. Otherwise, a lot of disgrace is sure to follow.