[Updated] Poco M2 Pro privacy concerns: Poco India pens open letter in response

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on July 9, 2020) follows:

Poco launched its first device called the Poco F1 back in 2018. Since then, the company has not yet managed to live up to the hype created by it. Just a few days ago, the company released the Poco M2 Pro in India which is more or less a carbon copy of the Redmi Note 9 Pro.

To add to the disappointment, many reviewers and individuals who managed to get the device early pointed out a major issue. This issue is related to user privacy or rather the lack thereof. Moreover, the political tensions between India and China have made the situation even worse for Poco.

Xiaomi is known for packing a ton of bloatware on its smartphones. But until this point, user privacy was not taken as seriously as it should have been. And citing privacy concerns, the Indian government banned 59 Chinese applications including TikTok.

However, it seemed Xiaomi or rather Poco had missed out on the memo. This is because the Poco M2 Pro comes with a few applications that were on the list of banned apps. Moreover, the cleaner application is from Cheetah Mobile. The same developers who were banned from the Play Store and by the Indian government.

Matter of fact, some first-party apps trick users into granting them permission to all sensors and files on the device. Simply tapping on ‘Allow’ grants the app a host of permissions that the app should have nothing to do with. Naturally, a lot of Poco fans are disappointed.

In response to the situation and user disappointment, Poco India has penned an open letter to clarify the situation. Take a look at the screenshot of the letter below.

According to the company, the apps were pre-installed on the devices before the directive from the Indian government. Moreover, Poco has also released a software update that aims to fix the problem surrounding user privacy. Moreover, the letter also states that no personal information from users was shared with any entity that has been banned by the government.

Nonetheless, this incident should alert all smartphone OEMs to take user privacy more seriously. We will now have to wait and see whether or not the software update actually addresses all the privacy concerns once more information surfaces on the matter.

Speaking of software updates, you can check out our Xiaomi Android 11 update tracker to know when the update arrives on your device.

In a follow-up letter, Poco has stated that it is now possible for users to uninstall the pre-installed apps that were banned. See more details here.

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