Manu Jain, the Global VP of Xiaomi and the company’s India head, has issued a statement refuting a news report claiming that the Mi Browser collects recordings of web and phone use on its devices and sends user data to other countries.
The report by Forbes claimed that the Chinese mobile giant was recording the usage data of millions of people.
The article mentioned a cybersecurity researcher reportedly using the Redmi Note 8 (Review), and claiming that the device was recording his web history even in ‘incognito’ mode. The researcher claimed that the recorded data was being sent to "remote servers in Singapore and Russia."
Terming the claims “incorrect and not true,” Jain has said that Xiaomi takes user privacy extremely seriously and it does not collect any data that the user has “not explicitly given permission or consent to.”
“In incognito mode, all user data is completely encrypted and anonymised. Mi Browser will never know what you browse in incognito mode and can't identify you basis incognito browsing,” he said.
At #Xiaomi, data privacy & security are of utmost importance!@XiaomiIndia had moved all it's data to local servers in #India ~2 years ago.
* We do NOT collect data w/o consent
* Data is encrypted
* India data stays in IndiaNews article from 2 yrs ago: https://t.co/kcghUcZiUu
— Manu Kumar Jain (@manukumarjain) May 2, 2020
The Xiaomi India MD said that reputed and international third-party companies have certified the security and privacy practices of the company’s smartphones and the Mi Browser.
Jain has also posted a video on his YouTube page dismissing all claims made by the report.
Earlier, Xiaomi had issued a blog post where it denied the claims. The company said that other internet firms too collect data, and that Xiaomi's data collection is no different from others.