Chinese smartphone company Realme is facing allegations of data theft of users. The government has ordered an inquiry into it. If you are also using the smartphone of this company then you should stay alert. Realme smartphones give better features at a lower price and this is the case with other Chinese brands as well. This is the reason why Chinese companies dominate the smartphone market in India.
According to a report by research company Counterpoint Research, four Chinese brands Vivo, Xiaomi, Oppo and Realme accounted for 54 percent of the total smartphones sold in the country in the first quarter of the calendar year 2023. Vivo, Oppo and Realme have the same parent company- BBK Electronics. And all the phones of the company have the enhanced intelligent services feature. It is this feature which has put Realme on the radar by the govt for data theft. Apart from Realme, Vivo, Oppo and another brand of BBK, OnePlus I also have this feature.
Realme on its part gave a clarification saying that the data of customers remain intact within the mobile and will not get leaked out by any chance.
The issue came to the fore recently. Apparently a user on Twitter tweeted about the Enhanced Intelligent Services feature present in Realme phones, collecting their personal data without their knowledge.
In our phones there are so many features. According to smartphone companies, Enhanced Intelligent Services is also another important feature. This feature makes the phone user friendly. But now it looks like it also collects personal data of the users. And this is some thing smartphone companies did not inform you. .If these features are for the convenience of the users, then it should be mandatory to take consent from them, but that is not the case.
Is Samsung also stealing your data?
However, the accusation does not stop with just Chinese companies but South Korean company Samsung is also included in this list. Samsung’s Galaxy S20FE also has such features. This phone also has a feature called Send diagnostic data. This is a default feature which is always on.. Due to this your information keeps getting collected in it.
However, it has not been confirmed that why smartphone companies are collecting users’ data? Since this relates to Chinese companies, it can also be an issue of national security.
Another concern is also related to turning on the location. There is an inbuilt feature in the smartphone, which shares a very important information related to us with all the apps. We are talking about GPS. Apps by keeping the GPS active, get information about where you are going and send you promotions and target ads based on your location. Now when it comes to smartphone companies stealing your data, they have information of your location all the time.
