It's been nine years since Xiaomi began to enter the smartphone and gain the trust of users, first in China and then in many other countries. In fact, in a short time, it has managed to become one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world, while holding the largest market share in India for the last four years.
Unfortunately, however, according to the latest developments, it appears that the successful company is collecting private data of its users, without them knowing it.
Data collection from Xiaomi browsers
According to what security researcher Cirlig discovered in Forbes, Xiaomi 's default browser , Mi Browser, Mi Browser Pro, and Mint, collect and send user data such as Google searches, web history, and Google News to servers located in Russia and Singapore. The researcher observed that the data collection continues even in incognito browsing.
Further investigation revealed that Xiaomi also tracks its users' habits regarding devices .
What did the company respond?
Xiaomi ,claims that if certain data is combined, it is easy to discover the identity of a user and even published a video with what he has discovered.
The company, for its part, has released new updates that allow users to disable the collection of aggregated data.
Xiaomi's browsers are particularly popular, with over 20 million downloads and are installed on the company's devices by default. And although this new feature has been released, it only applies to incognito browsing. This means that the data of those using regular browsing is still being collected.
Also, the ability to disable aggregate data collection is disabled by default, meaning that anyone who is not aware of it will not even know it exists.
For the above reasons, it is preferable not to use Xiaomi browsers.
How to remove browsers from your device?
You can uninstall a system app, like Xiaomi browsers, using the hidden settings for MIUI.
Alternatively, you can uninstall the app using Android, but it might be a bit tricky. This way, you can also uninstall other pre-installed apps on your Xiaomi device.
