Indian Air Force says no ban on Xiaomi smartphones

Lately, Xiaomi has been in a huge controversy regarding data security. Xiaomi was accused of stealing data from the user’s handsets and transmitting it to their servers back in China. Few days back it was reported that, concerned about sensitive information being leaked, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has initiated a high-alert on Xiaomi smartphones.

Also Read: How to know if your smartphone is leaking data, and where

However, the IAF has shared more clarity on this issue saying that, the notice regarding the smartphone, which was circulated four to five months back, was just an advisory and should not be considered as a ban.

Also Read: After Xiaomi, Sony now accused of data theft

In an interview with a media person from Indian Express, an IAF official said, “IAF doesn’t keep track of the smartphone market and neither does it recommend any particular brand or handset to its personnel. The advisory did not mention anything on banning the use of Chinese smartphones at all. It was more like a cautionary note as the handset was tracking user’s location and was sending the information to servers based in Beijing. This entire conclusion was based on reports from other sources. The advisory is nothing serious.”

Turns out, that Xiaomi’s claim was in-fact true, that the notice was an old one based on the testing done by F-secure on August 7, 2014 on Redmi 1s, which had the issue of data automatically being transmitted. However, post the update of the OS, they tested the handset again on August 14, to confirm that the issue is no longer present.