“We’d like to emphasize that at no point have we shared this information with outside parties”: OnePlus

OnePlus denies the allegation about the collection of user data without user consent. The company quickly reverted to the reviews of the researcher about its analytics collection program. The company claims that it was collecting the data for improving its analytic solutions by knowing about the user behavior with the intention of improving its services. But since the privacy issues were the major talk for the past few days, the company has decided to bring an end to it by providing an opt-in option for the user experience program.

The company was alleged to gather and transmit the user’s specific data and information like the phone numbers, serial numbers, MAC addresses, mobile network names, Wi-Fi information, and application timestamps – all without permission. By the end of October all OnePlus phones running OxygenOS will have a prompt in the setup wizard that asks users if they want to join the user experience program. The setup wizard will clearly indicate that the program collects usage analytics. In addition, it will include a terms of service agreement that further explains the analytics collection. The analytic program will no longer collect the telephone numbers, MAC Addresses and WiFi information. Also it offers the same facility to its existing users by turning off the usage analytics collection in the settings option. Carl Pei, the co-founder of OnePlus emphasized that at no point have the information was shared with outside parties and confirmed that the company would be putting a stop to the default collection of such analytics.