A Twitter post claims that an app on Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus’s phones is identifying and uploading bank account numbers to a Chinese server, but the company has told TechNode that this is incorrect.
In the latest OxygenOS Beta update, an application named Clipboard comes preinstalled on OnePlus devices and has been accused of transmitting users personal data to a Chinese server owned by Teddy Mobile, a service in China which helps in identifying unknown caller identities. Teddy Mobile claims to have 200 million users and cooperates with other Chinese smartphone operators including Xiaomi, Coolpad, YunOs, Oppo, Vivo, Gionee, Meizu, and Lenovo.
“The statement that Clipboard has been sending user data to the server is incorrect. The code is completely inactive in the open beta of OxyOS and user data is not sent to any server without the user’s consent,” a OnePlus spokesperson told TechNode. “In the Chinese beta version of OxyOS, identifies these files, in order to filter out some of this data so that it won’t be uploaded. The local data in these folders with these fields will not be sent to any server.”
OnePlus is one of the few players who, as a Chinese smartphone maker, only on the international market.
The news comes two week’s after its chief executive Pete Lau telling The Telegraph that its revenues last year had doubled to more than $1.4 billion and that this had come with “healthy profits”.
Mr. Lau said the smartphone company plans to continue releasing two new phones a year. The next OnePlus phone will come out toward the end of the second quarter and would run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 processor, the mobile chip unveiled in December. The company saw its OnePlus 5T become its fastest- and best-selling product after its launch in November, according to Pei, the company’s co-founder.