Xiaomi RedMi : Budget Phone or Super Spy?
With its spectacular arrival in the Indian markets, following the over-whelming success of Mi3,Xiaomi is yet again in the news, however, for very different reasons.
The Indian authorities, especially the Indian Air Force expressed their concerns over the intentions of the Xiaomi Smartphone’s cloud storage backup facility.
Despite the higher order decisions of cross border trade between India and China, India has always had their suspicions about the Chinese entering the Indian markets. An extension of these suspicions was the reaction of the Indian Air Force when they instructed their personnel and their families to boycott the Xiaomi Redmi 1S smartphones.
The fear surrounding the minds of the authorities are based on the tests run by F-Secure which is a Finnish security firm on the Redmi 1S. They found that the phone was forwarding details of the user like the name of the carrier, the phone number, the IMEI number (which helps in identifying the device) along with numbers from the caller’s phone book and text messages back to Beijing.
Redmi: The latest budget phone from Xiaomi
Xiaomi was quick to respond to these suspicions and attempted to ease the minds of their users by saying there is nothing to worry about. Xiaomi’s head in India, Manu Jain, conveyed via email, “We take rigorous precautions to ensure that all data is secured when uploaded to Xiaomi servers and is not stored beyond the time required. Strict encryption algorithms are implemented to protect user privacy.” He further reiterated that, “As far as we know, our cloud service is 100% compliant with all legal regulations internationally, including India. We are willing to meet with the authorities to resolve any concerns that they might be having.”
Post the F-Secure tests in August, Xiaomi quickly offered a software update which stopped the involuntary transfer of user data; though the information continued to be stored in Mi Cloud. The concern isn’t so much about storage but how could the information be potentially used, which makes this a security concern.
Indian Air Force express concern over the intentions of Xiaomi
Indian authorities have been wary of the Chinese trading activities before as well. In February 2014, Indian authorities had begun an investigation on Huawei, a Chinese telecom service company based on the suspicions that they were trying to hack into the telecom networks of Bharat Sanchar Nagar Nigam (BSNL). The Indian government also advised against the availing the services of ZTE, another Chinese telecom company. The reason these service providers were used was because they were cheapest telecom equipment providers. This has been the clinching factor in terms of Xiaomi and their range of smartphones. They offered great features at such low prices that people using other smartphones quickly turned to Xiaomi.
Xiaomi made its mark in the Indian markets when they launched their range of smartphones on Flipkart in a flash sale and have sold an astounding figure of 400,000 handsets so far. Their eighth flash sale on 28 October is also predicted to bring high scale profits to Xiaomi. The current estimation is that Xiaomi has sold more than half a million Redmi devices and 1.2 lakh Mi3 handsets.
According to the statement given by Hugo Barra, the Vice President at Xiaomi, the company has already startedthe migration ofthe data of their international users to data centers in USA and Singapore. By the end of October, it is said, that their global users from India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan will be benefited from this migration process.
With their upcoming big flash scale on 28th October, the customers hope that these issues be resolved and fast. Xiaomi is doing all that they can to comfort their users. Let’s hope the people at Xiaomi maintain their ethical and legal boundaries and continue to offer their great products without the security threats.
