At least one US smartphone maker has serious issues better safetys, according to the American authorities.
BLU Products, is one of the companies that sells Android smartphones in the United States and some other South American countries, and apparently has marketed about 120.000 devices that probably send text messages (and not only) to China.
Security researchers recently discovered a backdoor in pre-installed form software which tracks the smartphone user's geographic location, as well as all of their conversations, including text messages.
That said software στέλνει στη συνέχεια όλες τις πληροφορίες στην Κίνα κάθε 72 ώρες. Το μυστικό λογισμικό έχει αναπτυχθεί από μια κινεζική εταιρεία που ονομάζεται Shangai Adups Technology and according to researchers, runs on more than 700 million cell phones worldwide.
So the problem does not seem to be limited to 120.000 Android smartphones released by BLU Products in the United States.
In addition, the security company that found the backdoorKryptowire) claims that Adups software transmits the full contents of text messages, contact lists, call logs, geolocation information and other data to a Chinese server in accordance with New York Times.
According to Adups developers, the software is designed to help Chinese phone manufacturers monitor the behavior of users. The company also claims that the software version found on BLU's mobile devices was not intended for the US market.
Meanwhile, BLU Products secretly removed the software from its smartphone as soon as it was updated by security researchers.
According to BLU head Samuel Ohev-Zion, the presence of the backdoor was something they did not know, and that's why they removed it immediately as soon as they learned it.
It is also worth noting that the Chinese company Adups provides software to much larger mobile phone makers such as ZTE and Huawei, which have Android smartphones around the world, not just China.
