OnePlus admitted to collect users' personal data, but it would stop soon

OnePlus was recently accused of stealing users' private data. A security researcher named Christopher Moore had discovered that his OnePlus 2 was sending data to a HTTPS domain that belongs to the company without his consent. The Chinese smartphone manufacturer has now issued a statement regarding the matter.

The company is indeed guilty of collecting personal data of those using OnePlus smartphones. It has also explained the reason for doing so. According to OnePlus, its OxygenOS based smartphones transmit analytics in two different streams: usage analytics and device information. If you are wondering why; it is to "better understand general phone behavior and optimize OxygenOS for better overall user experience."

Well, OnePlus owners do have the liberty to opt-out of usage analytics collection by going to Settings / Advanced / Join user experience program. Having said that, users can't avoid device information collection, which is claimed to help OnePlus to provide "after-sale support."

Looking on the bright side, OnePlus has promised that it will stop collecting private information of users by the end of this month. All smartphones running on OxygenOS will have a prompt in the setup wizard which will ask users if they want to join the company's experience program.

Furthermore, the company assures it will not collect information about the screen, telephone numbers, serial number, IMEI, MAC address, device unlock events, IMSI numbers, mobile network names, abnormal reboots, and wireless network ESSID and BSSID henceforth.

Lastly, OnePlus states that its only purpose behind collecting users' date was to "better serve" its customers.

Meanwhile, the company has started rolling out the OxygenOS 4.5.13 OTA update to the OnePlus 5.