Nokia admits to accidentally sending information of Nokia 7 Plus users to China

tech2 News StaffMar 27, 2019 08:56:23 IST

A few days ago, Nokia smartphones were caught sending unencrypted user data to China.

The investigation was carried out by the Norwegian technology blog NRKbeta. NRK found that the server was associated with China Telecom and the data was being sent in 'unencrypted format' by a Nokia 7 Plus (review) device.

After this, the information was also confirmed by the Finnish data protection watchdog who said that some Nokia phones were sending user data to a Chinese server, which belongs to China.

Now the HMD Global has also acknowledged to accidentally sending personal information of Nokia 7 Plus users.

Nokia 7 Plus. Image: tech2/Rehan Hooda

As per the report in The Sun, HMD Global also claims that no personal "identifiable information" has been shared with third parties.

The issue is said to have plagued only a "single batch" of Nokia 7 Plus units. While this certainly concerns Nokia phone users, HMD Global said that the issue was caused by "an error in the software packaging process in a single batch of one device model".

Reports state that information disclosed via this incident can even be used to track down individuals. Also, NRKbeta claims that this private data was sent to China for months before Nokia fixed the problem in February.

Apparently, the security patch for the issue has been downloaded on all the devices and users can check if their phone has been updated through this online guide.

Nokia now might join other tech companies and be under the radar of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as the GDPR limits exporting of user data outside of the EU.