How to prevent OnePlus phones from silently collecting data

Bad news for those who like OnePlus. The OnePlus phone, running OxegenOS, a customized version of Android, is gathering more user data than necessary.

A recent blog post by researcher Christopher Moore gave detailed information about data collection by phone makers in Shenzhen, China, revealing that integrated tools on OxygenOS are regularly sent. Data about the cycle of OnePlus.

Collecting basic data of the device is the work of software manufacturers, devices still do to identify, analyze, fix software errors, improve product quality. But OnePlus collects information about user identity.

Moore started by interfering with network traffic to analyze what data his OnePlus is sending to the server. As a result, these data include:

1. phone number
2. MAC address
3. IMEI and IMSI codes
4. Mobile network name
5. ESSID and BSSID of wireless networks
6. Serial number of the device
7. Time when users lock, unlock the device
8. The time when the user opens and closes the application on the device
9. Time when users turn on, turn off the phone

Obviously, the above information is sufficient to identify any OnePlus user.

OnePlus phones from Chinese manufacturers collect more data than you think

'That's too much information about the device, many of which can directly lead to my OnePlus,' Moore said. 'It is even worse when the activity data contains any activity time taking place on which application, along with the phone serial number'.

In addition, there is no direct option to prevent this data collection behavior.

The same issue was reported to OnePlus last July by another researcher, whose online name was Tux, but was ignored by OnePlus and many people. Moore also reported a problem with the OnePlus support team but the group did not provide any solution, OnePlus does not have any response yet.

The good news is that Jakub Czekanski, an Android developer introduced a solution to turn off this data collection without rooting the device. You can connect the OnePlus to your computer, select USB debugging mode, open the adb shell and fill the pm uninstall -k command --user 0 net.oneplus.odm so that OnePlus can stop collecting too much data.