It took Cirlig just a few seconds to change the garbled data into readable chunks of information. Though the Chinese company claimed the data was being encrypted when transferred in an attempt to protect user privacy, Cirlig found he was able to quickly see just what was being taken from his device by decoding a chunk of information that was hidden with a form of easily crackable encoding, known as base64. He then confirmed they had the same browser code, leading him to suspect they had the same privacy issues.Īnd there appear to be issues with how Xiaomi is transferring the data to its servers. He downloaded firmware for other Xiaomi phones- including the Xiaomi MI 10, Xiaomi Redmi K20 and Xiaomi Mi MIX 3 devices. But for customers, that low cost could come with a hefty price: their privacy.Ĭirlig thinks that the problems affect many more models than the one he tested. Xiaomi’s big sell is cheap devices that have many of the same qualities as higher-end smartphones. Valued at $50 billion, Xiaomi is one of the top four smartphone makers in the world by market share, behind Apple, Samsung and Huawei. It's a one-click solution (along with an undo button in case things don't go as you planned) from a known developer that's been in the privacy business since 2000.Many more millions are likely to be affected by what Cirlig described as a serious privacy issue, though Xiaomi denied there was a problem. If you really need to block Windows 10 from sending telemetry data back to Microsoft then the utility I recommend you use is Spybot Anti-Beacon.
Talk about taking what is a non-issue and blowing it up into a real problem! No self-respecting privacy tool should install adware onto a system. Some tools actively display ads, and one even installs a third-party tool that displays ads in other applications. I've come across a number of "Windows 10 privacy tools" from unknown sources that do who knows what. If you ask me if you be worried about using Windows 10, my answer would be a "no." I have several Windows 10 installations here and I'm not concerned.īut despite such reassurances there are a lot of people who are concerned by this, and the fact that Microsoft isn't willing to give concerned users a way to opt out from data collection ( which I think is a bad idea) is adding fuel to the flames.Īnother problem is that all this hysteria is making people go out and look for tools and utilities to put a brakes on Microsoft being able to collect data from their PCs, and some of the tools out there are, well, shady at best.
This is why I've put the word spying in quotation marks in the title, and I'm only using this word because this is the word most commonly used by those concerned by this issue.
The data that's being collected is being used to make Microsoft products and services better, and crazy claims aside, no one has been able to produce a shred of evidence to the contrary.