Over the weekend, Xiaomi was on the radar for security concerns over the Mi Browser, which was caught collecting data even after Incognito mode was turned on. Forbes was quick to report on it, and it immediately spread like wildfire.
A few whitehat hackers are responsible for uncovering this whole thing – Andrew Tierney (@Cybergibbons) and Gabriel Cîrlig (@hookgab). They showed proof where it was sending data back to the servers even when incognito was turned on. Here’s the punchline.
Xiaomi India was quick to respond with an official statement and a tweet, but I personally wish that the tweet didn’t exist because it’s just way too poorly written. The statement itself is informative.
Within the statement, it is stated that 3rd party companies and organizations – TrustArc and British Standard Institution (BSI), greenlit Xiaomi’s built-in apps, including the Mi Browser.
And now, Xiaomi has released an update for the Mi Browser app with a new “incognito mode to switch on/off aggregated data collection” in the form of an “enhanced incognito” option.
It merely provided an additional step to stop the aggregated data harvesting. At least Xiaomi is quick to respond and provided a real user-controlled option to disable the data harvesting.
Is it over-exaggerated?
We think yes. I mean… is anyone actually using the Mi Browser app? I think many of us will immediately use Chrome instead.
We don’t know all of the details to definitively point fingers. But it seems that Xiaomi did not follow the general understanding of what “incognito” means.
In any case, there’s an option to disable the data-mining that Xiaomi is doing. We should be wary of what’s going on in the products that we use.
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