researchers University of Edinburgh And those Trinity College of Ireland conducted a study in which they found that mobile phones Xiaomi, OnePlus and Realme They have pre-installed apps that collect information from users without them realizing it.

For the investigation, they took three references, one for each brand: Redmi Note 11, OnePlus 9R and Realme Q3 Pro. The top three sellers of these companies are located in China.

What they found is that phones come from the factory with a series of platforms that have permission to access people’s data, which work in the background and take that stuff to the company and app developers.

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Cell phones with spy apps

The analysts found that the three phones tested had more than 30 third-party platforms installed out of the box, including Baidu Input and Sogou InputIn the case of Xiaomi and Baidu Map and Amap For OnePlus and Realme phones.

This type of application is known as bloatware, which fills the device with services from the moment the user purchases them and sometimes takes up more space than necessary.

But the real problem lies in their permissions, because they work in the background and collect information from the user without the user realizing it.

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“We found that these packets transmit to many third-party domains privacy-related information related to the user’s device (persistent identifiers), geolocation (GPS coordinates, network-related identifiers), user profile (phone number, application usage, etc.) ) and social interactions (eg, call history), without consent or even notification,” the researchers said.

Besides, in that case Xiaomi They found that the Redmi smartphone sends information to an external tracking URL when pre-installed apps such as Camera, Messages, Notes, Voice Recorder and Settings are launched.

The collected information was sent virtually anytime, even when the mobile phone was connected to another mobile network, when it had no signal or did not have a SIM card inserted.

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Of course, the researchers explained that this situation is mostly found China. In the rest of the world, the number of pre-installed apps that pose a risk is three to four times lower because they require eight to 10 fewer permissions.

Therefore, the best option to avoid this is to review the permissions of the pre-installed apps and delete all the ones that will not be used, which will also help to optimize the storage space of the phone.

The dangers of an old cell phone

Both phones have an operating system Android or iOS They have the option to upgrade their software to have access to better features, applications and functions. However, with each new major update in which the system changes, mobile phones become less and less compatible with application requirements to the point where they are no longer updated.

This restriction not only prevents them from downloading new versions of operating systems, but they also cannot access minor software updates, although most of them include improvements to security bugs that can be found in past versions. This is the main reason why these users have not adequately faced the risks of computer attacks.

At this time, any device may be vulnerable to cyber-attacks, hacking, remote access, malware penetration through malicious applications, among other possible security risks that directly affect mobile phones, if not, may include data stored on it, including banking information, access to other platforms codes, personal information, etc.