Mobile manufacturers Xiaomi are recording millions of people’s private web search and phone use data.

An Internet security expert has disclosed that Xiaomi is accessing its customer's web browsing history, but, the extent of this breach is unknown.

An Internet security expert has disclosed that Xiaomi is accessing its customer's web browsing history, but, the extent of this breach is unknown.A cybersecurity researcher named Gabi Cyrlig had told Forbes that he had figured out about Chinese mobile giant Xiaomi was constantly monitoring and collecting all his web search data. This collected data was allegedly sent to some remote servers of another company named Alibaba, which were reportedly rented by Xiaomi. Upon further research, it was found that multiple mobile device models of Xiaomi also showed similar traits of data harvesting.

Another cybersecurity researcher named Andrew Tierney has also found such similar data harvesting traits by the web browsers launched by Xiaomi on google play. The data was allegedly being recorded even on the incognito mode which the researcher had pointed out.

Further, it was noticed that the mobile browser code form different models of Xiaomi phones were the same which Cyrlig believes have the same privacy and security issues. None of the governments that have allowed Xiaomi to operate in their countries has officially come up with such issues. But the heads up given by the two cybersecurity researchers actually a cause of concern which needs more clarity regarding the extent of the data tracking by Xiaomi. Exact data regarding the number of devices subject to the privacy breach is also unknown.

A couple of days after the Forbes report was published, on 2 May 2020, Xiaomi released a press statement claiming that the facts were misrepresented in the Forbes article. They also claimed that the user security and privacy were their top concerns. Even though Xiaomi acknowledged that they do store user data on remote servers worldwide, they insisted that there were no privacy issues and that they strictly adhered to the guidelines of the governments across all their overseas markets.