Smart phones have become a necessity of one’s life. Now a days more than a trend or symbol of aristocracy they have become a need. A customer wants a smart phone with a reasonable price and high end features. Most of the companies have emerged with brilliant marketing strategies but Chinese smartphones seems to be taking off in the Indian market because they are a great combination of off modern features and low price but then the question arises how does the Chinese smart phone companies like Xiaomi, Gionee and Oppo fare off so well in the Indian market even after having a security leakage issue. Although these companies seems to satisfy the customer in every aspect but they have a major security leakage issue.
According to report in a national daily Chinese smartphones are leaking some major information which are sent back to the the servers in China. The IAF has also alerted its people to avoid using these smartphones and an initial testing was also done by F-Secure on August 7, 2014 on a Redmi 1S, which had the issue of data automatically being transmitted while Xiaomi claims that their smartphones are safe and the Indian Air Force had issues a notice based on a two-month-old report by F-Secure.
Although after an update of the OS, they tested the handset again on August 14, to confirm that the issue is no longer present. The Note states that F-Secure, a security firm, carried out tests on the Redmi 1S, only to find that the phone was forwarding the carrier name, phone number, IMEI, address book records and SMS to the Chinese servers in Beijing. The report also mentioned about a user in Hong Kong, reporting that the Redmi Note automatically connected to a particular IP address hosted in China. The IP address belongs to the CNNIC, which is the administrative agency for Internet affairs operating under the Ministry of Information Industry of China.
Although there are laws against the leakage of privacy but the user must himself take care about the security of his data.
Some important sections have been substituted and inserted by the IT Amendment Act, 2008 in which Section 66E, Section 66B and Section 69B provide strict laws for information security.
However actions takes time to take place but the Chinese companies have firmly rooted in the Indian market and that is why they thriving it so well.
Although at user level there are lots of ways for to ensure the security of data. There are applications available for android and iOS to by the name OS monitor and viaProtect to provide the user information about the data being sent by different applications without his knowledge.
So, somehow we ourselves can put a step forward to avoid the insecurity of our data.

Source: Deccan Chronicle and Intellectual Property & Information Technology Laws Division

Varun Kumar
IIIT Allahabad