According to a new report from ‘The Wall Street Journal’, some low-end smartphone manufacturers are using the devices to get user’s private data. The data is then sold to big companies. The report investigated some smartphone brands and Singtech P10 was found to be the main offender. The Singtech P10 smartphone which is being sold in Myanmar and Cambodia gathered data from these countries and then sold it to a big Taiwan-based advertising company, General Mobile Corp, commonly known as GMobi. The company was found using the data to target users with specific advertisements.
The smartphones were shipped with a pre-installed application which collected all the data. The data which was being collected and sold included IMEI numbers, MAC addresses and also the user’s location. The same application was also found on many smartphones in Brazil, India, and China. When contacted, the CEO of GMobi Paul Wu denied that the company violated any data collection laws.
The concerns for user data privacy and protection were raised a lot after Facebook was found involved in selling the user’s data to a third party called Cambridge Analytica. As soon as the news broke out, the scandal took over the social and digital media by storm and the company which bought the data was also shut down. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg also apologized on the matter.