Chinese phone manufacturer OnePlus said that it will review how it collects data from its users in a post on its official forum (which we fist saw reported by The Verge).
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Chinese phone manufacturer OnePlus announced it will review how it collects user data
The company said that the changes it's making will be reflected in new, updated terms of service.
Numerous complaints surfaced after a post that detailed how OnePlus was amassing data from its users prompted the company to change the way it approaches the issue.
OnePlus will tweak its terms of service at the end of the month, and prompt users to opt-out of the data-collecting program if they wish to.
Last week, independent software engineer Chris Moore found that OnePlus had been tracking a lot of information from his personal phone, and wrote a post on his blog to explain further.
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As Moore detailed, OnePlus had been gathering data such as his phone's IMEI, serial number, cellular number, MAC address, mobile network name, IMSI prefix, and wireless network ESSID and BSSID, and more.
In his post on OnePlus' forum, cofounder Carl Pei said that the information was used to do things such as optimise the custom Oxygen OS operating system and offer better after-sale support, and noted that nothing was shared outside the firm.
However, with the new system, the setup process that appears when a customer powers up a OnePlus product will now "clearly indicate that the program collects usage analytics," as per Pei's words, so to avoid any misunderstandings.
OnePlus will also stop gathering phone numbers, MAC addresses, and WiFi information altogether.
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