Xiaomi Smartphones Secretly Record User Browsing and App Activity
Cybersecurity researchers discover that Xiaomi smartphones and browsers covertly track and transmit massive amounts of private user data to remote servers. The Chinese tech giant faces serious privacy accusations affecting millions of devices worldwide.
Cybersecurity researcher Gabi Cirlig discovers that his Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 smartphone secretly records extensive private user activity. The device tracks all websites visited, search engine queries on platforms like Google and DuckDuckGo, and every item viewed in the phone's news feed. This pervasive monitoring continues even when the user activates the supposedly private "incognito" mode.
The smartphone also logs physical interactions, recording which folders the user opens and which screens they swipe to, including the settings page. Xiaomi packages all of this sensitive data and transmits it to remote servers hosted by Alibaba in Singapore and Russia, while the underlying web domains are registered in Beijing.
At the request of Forbes, fellow researcher Andrew Tierney confirms that the Mi Browser Pro and Mint Browser apps on Google Play collect the exact same troubling data. With over 15 million downloads on those apps alone, this data harvesting impacts a massive number of people, though Xiaomi firmly denies any wrongdoing.