OnePlus phones leak your privacy and more

It sounds weird that a shopping blog like this talks about phone security, but many people use Sarah Shopper to track price of smartphones so we do have some responsibility to inform this.

Next time you’re thinking of buying an Android phone, think twice if the brand is OnePlus. Apparently, the company behind it was caught collecting personally identifiable data from OnePlus phones through incredibly detailed analytics.

Everyone, including Sarah Shopper, use analytics in some way (we use Google Analytics, used by the majority of website and apps), but the data we collect are anonymized (we don’t know that a visitor named Jim Hopper with phone number +1 555 5555 just opened Tinder). OnePlus phones on the other hand send the phone’s number, IMEI number, mobile network names, Wi-Fi connection info, and some other things—every time an app was opened.

Not only that, one developer recently found out that some application intended for factory testing is installed by default in many OnePlus phones (at least OnePlus 3, 3T, and 5). This application can be used as a backdoor. If you’ve watched The Matrix, a backdoor is like a secret door where you can enter a secure system without password. Yikes.

So, do yourself a favor, choose a safer phone.