OnePlus' credibility is at stakes

OnePlus is well known Chinese smartphone giant for producing high end android mobile devices which not only give stock android feel but also, they keep the pricing in the affordable range. Smartphones like OnePlus 1, OnePlus 2, OnePlus 3/3T, OnePlus 5/5T have made a great impact in the smartphone market and kept best seller's tag. While OnePlus have achieved very much in the short amount of time, there have been many privacy related complaints that affects the smartphone user very much because it can be used to identify and steal from the users.

Quite recently, security flaws emerged and this time, it was one of the most critical information leak that people are obviously very sensitive about, occurred that compromised people their credit card info. OnePlus reported that credit card information of around 40,000 OnePlus users were leaked. This occurred when OnePlus' servers were injected with a malicious script that spilled user credit card information. According to the reports, this could have occurred from somewhere near mid-November and 11th of January.

OnePlus have earlier been accused of stealing user data (user data collection) which was discovered by a security analyst and researcher that OnePlus used to collect user data including wifi usage, phone information, mobile number, and various other information including app usage.

Well, yea this sounds very much suspicious. But OnePlus co founder Carl Pei ensured everyone that they take user data privacy very seriously and next time they are going to inform the users whenever they are going to collect user data. Also, they just collected user data merely to improve user experience through OxygenOS optimisation.

For data collection purposes, they now use user experience program which modifies the OxygenOS to send user data to their servers. The data is divided into usage analytics and device information. OnePlus has said that they won't collect device information (including phone number and more data) or they'll simply ask the users for the collection.

This incident of credit card information leak have dented the manufacturer another time as there have already been the incidents which proved OnePlus to be a little less sensitive about user privacy. However, OnePlus have also ensured people that they will offer full support and ask them to contact the company if they see any illegal and malicious transactions they see from their card. Lets hope these episodes won't occur again.“We are… working with our current payment providers to implement a more secure credit card payment method, as well as conducting an in-depth security audit,” was an statement on OnePlus forum.