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Some Low-Cost Android Phones Come at a Price -- Your Privacy (cnet.com)
Cheap phones are coming at the price of your privacy, security analysts discovered. From a report: At $60, the BLU R1 HD is the top-selling phone on Amazon. Last November, researchers caught it secretly sending private data to China. Shanghai Adups Technology, the group behind the spying software on the BLU R1 HD, called it a mistake. But analysts at Kryptowire found the software provider is still making the same "mistake" on other phones. At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, researchers from Kryptowire, a security firm, revealed that Adups' software is still sending a device's data to the company's server in Shanghai without alerting people. But now, it's being more secretive about it. "They replaced them with nicer versions," Ryan Johnson, a research engineer and co-founder at Kryptowire, said. "I have captured the network traffic of them using the Command and Control channel when they did it." An Adups spokeswoman said that it had resolved the issues in 2016 and that the issues "are not existing anymore." Kryptowire said it has observed the company sending data without telling users on at least three different phones.
My lab manager is pretty wealthy, between him and his wife (she is a surgeon) they are worth 7-digits. He broke his phone and ordered the absolute cheapest android phone he could find. I think it needed up being a Blu.
I tried to talk him out of it, but he simply doesn't care. On the flip side, he spent $15k on a carbon-fiber mountain bike a couple weeks ago.
one example: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/...
another: http://www.businessinsider.com...
Apple has also stated publicly "We may collect information such as occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, location, and the time zone where an Apple product is used so that we can better understand customer behavior and improve our products, services, and advertising."
Then buy an Alcatel phone as they have built in rooting capability with no external software required. For those that want to know how this is how you do it and I've tested in on my own phone (Alcatel Flint) and it works and takes less than 2 minutes...
Alcatel has its own "system updates" app. If you tap the three dots in the right hand corner and then hit "Help", then hit the "Auto -Check Intervals" button a bunch, it will unlock "Advanced Mode." Go back and tap the three dots again and it will be under "help." When you go into this advanced mode, it will ask you for a "tester password". The pass is fotaapp*#1221#.
And that is it, in under 2 minutes you will have a rooted phone you can do with what you will.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.