Secret Backdoor in Some U.S. Phones Sent Data to China, Analysts Say
I have a chinese Android phone. Instead of connecting it to the Internet I connected it to my computer over bluetooth and started monitoring the traffic it tried to send. There were attempts to connect to Google servers and chinese manufacturer&#x27;s servers. The data sent to China was supposed to contain sensitive information like phone number or SIM card identifier.<p>It also has an auto-update (read: backdoor) feature that cannot be disabled.<p>I ended up making a linux-based whitelist firewall to access the Internet but it is pretty inconvinient because I have to manually enable every new host. And I can use it only at home.<p>As a consumer I am very disappointed and feel being deceived by Google. I know about &quot;you are the product&quot; saying but the smartphone is not free. I bought an expensive (two hundred dollars!) device and I had to spend a lot of my time to be able to control its activity. And of course the advertisement never mentioned that a smartphone is going to spy on me.<p>We need a law against this.