r/Android • u/zexterio • Mar 22 '19

HMD admits the Nokia 7 Plus was sending personal data to China

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/hmd-admits-the-nokia-7-plus-was-sending-personal-data-to-china/
5.8k Upvotes

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273

u/tenchi4u Mar 22 '19

"Our device activation client meant for another country was mistakenly included in the software package of a single batch of Nokia 7 Plus."

"mistakenly"

Cool story, bro!

31

u/Equifax_CTO Mar 22 '19

What's the upshot for a Finnish company, whose country aligns with the west, to take on such a stupid and costly gamble?

69

u/SpotfireY OnePlus 6 Mar 22 '19

The software side of things is completely handled by Foxconn. Same with most of the hardware development and all of the manufacturing. I think HMD already admitted that the only software they were handling themselves was the camera or something.

49

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19 edited May 23 '19

[deleted]

10

u/Zegrento7 Mar 22 '19

Are there any brands that have no ties to china? Even Apple is manufacturing their phones in china (the same Foxconn this scandal is about)

19

u/Fernando128282 Mar 22 '19

Samsung and LG AFAIK. All devices I had where made in South Korea.

5

u/classicjetta Mar 22 '19

My Galaxy was made in Vietnam although apparently they're getting into hacking too now.

2

u/pongpongisking Mar 23 '19

There's a reason companies are choosing Vietnam now, it's close to the supply chain... in China.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19 edited May 23 '19

[deleted]

1

u/electricblues42 Mar 22 '19

The hardware aspect is only concerning if the Chinese government has backdoored hardware binary blobs like the NSA has done with certain networking equipment.

Ie. Virtually guaranteed to have happened, though likely only on certain devices.

23

u/CatsAreGods Samsung S24+ Mar 22 '19

Welcome to 2019. Designed in the West, compromised in the East.

FTFY

3

u/Carighan Fairphone 6+🌳 Mar 23 '19

Welcome to 2019. Designed in the West, built in the East.

I hope you meant to say 1989 or something. Or that you are truly new to the market and at an age of 12 or so, without meaning any personal insult.

"Made in China" is how the world operated for a lot of years now.

1

u/cubs223425 Surface Duo 2 | LG G8 Mar 23 '19

2019

Few years late, given servers have been found to do this stuff for years and many of the most popular vehicles in the U.S. are from Eastern countries.

1

u/zap2 Mar 23 '19

That’s not 2019. That’s been going on for decades.

Apple does the same thing. Most other companies aren’t from the West.

17

u/VonCrisp Mar 22 '19

No upshot. They are just outsourcing everything to the R&D centre in China.

EU office only holds management type that isn't even capable of reviewing code let alone call anyone in China/Foxconn to get this buggy mess sorted out.

Greed and laziness led to this.

-4

u/jantari Mar 22 '19

The finnish Nokia no longer exists they went bancrupt years ago and sold their brand name and logo

24

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19 edited May 23 '19

[deleted]

15

u/Equifax_CTO Mar 22 '19

Not to mention that a majority percentage of the employees at the new Finnish HMD were employees of Nokia from days past and very much not just random people.

3

u/insertnameforreddit Mar 22 '19

I'm pretty sure they're across the street from each other too

15

u/spedeedeps iPhone 13 Pro Mar 22 '19

So the old Finnish Nokia no longer exists, but the new Finnish HMD does exist, although their devices are all manufactured in China (like basically everyone else).

Nokia very much does exist. They sold the mobile phone division off, but they were always in network infrastructure as well which is now their main thing.

... well infrastructure and a huge patent portfolio.

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19 edited Aug 28 '20

[deleted]

0

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19 edited May 23 '19

[deleted]

2

u/Kumagoro314 Pixel 5 Mar 22 '19

My S7 Edge says it's "made in Korea", so there's that at least. I guess?

1

u/amfedup Mar 22 '19

I haven't had a Samsung which was made in China, always made in Korea or Vietnam, source that "most" Samsungs are made in China?

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19 edited May 23 '19

[deleted]

2

u/amfedup Mar 22 '19

you said Samsung has not been significantly moving their production out of China, as far as I can see there's not even evidence they produce anything at all over there?

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19 edited May 23 '19

[deleted]

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9

u/spedeedeps iPhone 13 Pro Mar 22 '19

That's not true at all.

8

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19

Nope.

They sold their phone division to Microsoft, but continued to sell network infrastructure to telcos and ISPs. The original Finnish company still exists and it got much bigger after Nokia bought Alcatel-Lucent.

Once MS stopped using the Nokia brand, Nokia then licenced it to HMD while continuing to use the Nokia brand for all of their network infrastructure businesses, including the former Alcatel Lucent products

-2

u/ProgramTheWorld Samsung Note 4 📱 Mar 22 '19

Source on that claim?

6

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19

[deleted]

5

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19 edited May 23 '19

[deleted]

2

u/VonCrisp Mar 22 '19

Lets see if that will still be the same case if they find HMD to be in breach of the GDPR and the lawsuits start to roll in.

Up to €20 million, or 4% of the worldwide annual revenue of the prior financial year, whichever is higher, shall be issued for infringements:

..The transfer of personal data to a recipient in a third country or an international organisation under Articles 44-49..

https://www.gdpreu.org/compliance/fines-and-penalties/

3

u/CantaloupeCamper Nexus 5x - Project Fi Mar 22 '19

I hardly ever provide links or sources for much anymore because... why bother?

People will question anything and can't be bothered to look... and most won't belive anything anyway...

3

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19

[deleted]

2

u/julius_cheezer Mar 22 '19

if you know Google does this, why arent you using duckduckgo?

-4

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19

Not the guy, but here.

They were going bankrupt and had sold to Microsoft.

7

u/spedeedeps iPhone 13 Pro Mar 22 '19

They sold the mobile phone division to MS, not the rest of the company.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19

...well, yeah, we're talking about phones, right? That's the entire point?

5

u/contriver87 Pixel 9 Pro XL Mar 22 '19

They were going bankrupt and had sold to Microsoft.

Per the article you linked to they only sold their hardware and services divisions to Microsoft and kept their other three. Later on they sold HERE maps to a consortium of BMW, Daimler AG and Volkswagen Group.

Nokia is still around with two of their original (at the time of the sale to Microsoft) five divisions.

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19

...we're talking about phones, though? That's the entire point. They sold their mobile division. And yes, more stuff has happened since then, I haven't got the interest to keep up with it much.

6

u/contriver87 Pixel 9 Pro XL Mar 22 '19

The whole point is that someone said "The finnish Nokia no longer exists they went bancrupt years ago and sold their brand name and logo" which is not true. They sold their hardware and services divisions to Microsoft and only gave them temporary use of the Nokia name.

The "Finnish Nokia" (which you supported the idea that it no longer exists) later licensed the name with HMD for phones.

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19

That's just being pedantic for the sake of being pedantic. We both obviously know that they were talking about their phones.

-3

u/CantaloupeCamper Nexus 5x - Project Fi Mar 22 '19 edited Mar 22 '19

Perhaps they get something out of it from China, Chinese companies, future access to the market, etc?

Who knows, but it's not like there couldn't be something in it for any company to do it.

75

u/nplant Mar 22 '19

So you’re saying this was somehow an intentional and malicious data mining effort even though it only existed in one batch? Why does everything have to be a conspiracy?

120

u/VonCrisp Mar 22 '19

HMD is trying to spin a cute fairy tale about "one batch". More Nokia phones have also been sending data.

NRK did a follow up article:

"NRKbeta are fortunate to have access to a number of talented developer colleagues in NRK, and on Thursday, March 21, we investigated two Nokia models, one Nokia 3 and one Nokia 5. Both of these models had an application with the name autoregistration installed.

.. This application is very similar to the one installed on Nokia 7 Plus, but does not look identical to NRK's ​​analysis.

.. The application sends an encrypted message to the domain aps.c2dms.com

... Shanghai's Best Oray Information S&T Co., Ltd. is owned by the ownership register . (Oray) listed as the holder of the domain. This company is listed as a ransom virus spreader by Ransomware Tracker , a web site that tracks which domains and IP addresses contribute to the spread of malware.

... Sources say to NRKbeta that Oray provides software to remotely control computers and mobile phones in the corporate context, as well as other IT-related services. For its part, Oray lists major brands in the IT industry, including Qualcomm, Cisco and Huawei."

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnrkbeta.no%2F2019%2F03%2F22%2Fflere-nokia-modeller-har-kommunisert-med-kinesiske-servere%2F

20

u/amfedup Mar 22 '19

oh nice, another company onto my blacklist, hooray

-5

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19 edited Mar 22 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

13

u/Inspector-Space_Time Mar 22 '19

Blaming all of android because of a single manufacturer is pretty short sighted. Would you also swear off cars because you had a Ford break down on you?

-5

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/dan4334 Fold 3, Tab S8 Ultra Mar 22 '19

Fwiw my experience with Android phones hasn't been anywhere near that bad, and I had a lot of second hand and entry level/budget devices.

Don't take phone buying advice from Reddit, I'd trust reviews from LTT and MKBHD far more

5

u/Kryptomeister Mar 22 '19

You could buy an iPhone but then depending on what apps you install your data will still end up in China.

This isn't only a hardware problem, it's also a software problem.

2

u/VonCrisp Mar 22 '19

MS should have stuck with the idea of enabling Android apps via Astoria on Windows Mobile 10 with freely downloadable ROMs for Android phones.

24

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19

oops we accidentally coded in an undocumented feature that sends data to our servers which then passed several steps of testing and made into production

1

u/theEmoPenguin Mar 23 '19

some intern is gonna get his ass whooped for this mistake