OnePlus to reconsider data collection policies after privacy fiasco

Last week, OnePlus was drawn into a major controversy when one eager OnePlus user discovered that the company sips on various sorts of device information silently in the background. Post media reports, the company clarified that they do collect data for improving the user experience for all supported devices. Now, OnePlus is reconsidering its data collection policies.

On their recent blog post, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei stressed on the fact they collect data only to improve user experience on OnePlus devices running Oxygen OS. The company swears by the fact that they don’t share usage statistics to third parties. “The reason we collect usage analytics through the user experience program is so we can better understand general phone behaviour and optimize OxygenOS for a better overall user experience. At any time, users can opt-out of usage analytics collection by navigating to 'Settings' -> 'Advanced' -> 'Join user experience program',” said Pei.

OnePlus assures that if you opt out of the User Experience Program, no user data will be collected from your phone. In fact, by next month, all OnePlus phones running OxygenOS will have a prompt in the setup wizard that asks users whether they want to join user experience program. The setup wizard will clearly indicate that the program collects usage analytics. Apart from that, the company will also stop collecting telephone numbers, MAC Addresses and WiFi information.

So there you have it — if you were worried about the privacy issues on your OnePlus smartphone after last week incident, then this piece of information should give you relief.