3 Reasons Why Xiaomi’s Security Concerns Should Not Matter to You

Ever since the arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou last year, there have been many worldwide concerns regarding Chinese technology. At the heart of these concerns is Xiaomi, a Chinese company known for selling inexpensive products, and one that has recently openly confessed to collecting user data. With all of this in mind, here are three reasons we think any of these security concerns are simply not worth worrying about.

Spec to Price Ratio

When purchasing a Xiaomi phone, you’re signing up for early access to the latest and greatest smartphone specifications at half of the price other manufactures will sell them for. Take for example the Mi 10 series of phones, Xiaomi’s latest flagship. At about half the price of the latest Samsung S20, you are getting very similar display, camera and processor specifications.

Taking this into consideration, it becomes important to question just how Xiaomi turns a profit. In an article posted by the South China Morning Post, Xiaomi not only detailed that it caps its hardware sale profits at 5% (in comparison Apple keeps it at around 64%), but that Xiaomi’s “profit from fee-based internet services is quite considerable” In other words, by collecting data through its browser and other services, Xiaomi is better able to target ads and paid services to its consumers, keeping the cost of their hardware down whilst still making a decent income.

Chinese Regulations

Under the recent allegations that Xiaomi was collecting user information from its browser, the company responded, as posted in an Android Authority article, that it does the following:

“collects ‘aggregate usage statistics data’ in incognito mode. This includes: system information, preferences, user interface feature usage, responsiveness, performance, memory usage, and crash reports. This data cannot be used to identify an individual, the company argued in response to Forbes’ report.”

In the scope of Chinese regulations, more specifically the Cyber Secuirty Law effective from June 1, 2017, which rules the collection of personal data as illegal - Xiaomi’s claim seems to match. The Law defines personal data as “information that identifies a natural person either by itself or in combination with other information. The term includes a person’s name, address, telephone number, date of birth, identity card number and biometric identifiers.”

Of course, there is much to be theorised about whether or not companies abide by these laws, but in a completely theoretical framework, Xiaomi’s claim of what it collects would match the legal boundaries of the Chinese government.

Bootloading

If you weren’t convinced by any of the previous reasons stated in this article, then this last one is for you: Don’t like Xiaomi’s data collection software? Simply get rid of it. Being one of the biggest open-source communities, Xiaomi devices are easily bootloadable, allowing you to easily remove the pre-installed software and install data-collecting free versions. If you’d like to understand how this works in greater detail, click here to watch a video tutorial on how to unlock your Xiaomi smartphone.

Do you think these are good reasons to justify any of Xiaomi’s security concerns? Let us know in the comments below!

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