OnePlus 3T Open Beta Sends Your Clipboard Data to Alibaba Servers

OxygenOS Updates Bring February Security Patch, New Features to OnePlus 3/3T

OnePlus has recently found a new interest in getting stuck in situations that tin can only be described as dumpster fires. Offset there was the Engineer Mode controversy, and at present there'south this.

According to user v1nc on the OnePlus forums, the company's latest beta for the OnePlus 3T is doing something extremely fishy. It'south apparently sending clipboard information from users' phones to servers owned by Alibaba.

The user found this out by accident, when NetGuard (a popular network firewall managing director) blocked the Clipboard app – the app that stores your re-create-pasted text and history – from accessing the network. On further investigation, the user plant out that the server the app was trying to ping was an Alibaba endemic property.

Android Police has since contacted OnePlus regarding the upshot, and the response they received can simply exist described as completely irresponsible, and downright stupid.

In its statement, the Chinese company said, "Our OnePlus beta program is designed to test new features with a selection of our community. This particular feature was intended for HydrogenOS, our operating organization for the Prc marketplace. We will be updating our global OxygenOS beta to remove this feature."

Let's pause that statement downwardly a scrap. Firstly, OnePlus, sending clipboard data to whatsoever server whatever is not really the definition of a characteristic. In fact, information technology's equally far away from a characteristic as you can get.

Also, if the 'feature' was meant for Hydrogen OS, why'due south information technology in Oxygen OS anyway? Also, why's information technology even on Hydrogen Os anyway? What point is served past sending a user's clipboard information to a server?

Then once again, OnePlus said that they'll remove the 'characteristic' from OxygenOS with a new update. Gee, cheers, OnePlus. That sounds to me more like "Oh, you caught us. We gotta remove it now."

Whatsoever OnePlus's thinking behind adding this 'feature', this is going to plow into a PR nightmare for the company (as information technology should). Scarily enough, the OnePlus representative who spoke with Android Police also claimed that "this feature is not uncommon for Cathay users." I'grand just… wow.

If y'all're on the beta for the OnePlus 3T, get out right now. The building is on fire, and you don't wanna be collateral damage for a company that's clearly not doing enough for user privacy. Either that, or it simply doesn't intendance much.

The 'feature' is not nowadays in the stable Oxygen Os build for the 3T, and there is currently no word on whether it's present in the beta Oxygen OS build for the OnePlus three or non, although there haven't been any reports of this happening on OnePlus 3 devices.

UPDATE:

According to user 'AndiMischka' on Reddit, the data OnePlus is sending over to the server does not include whatever clipboard data at all. While that does come as a relief, OnePlus'south poor explanation of what was really going on is still distressing.

Yet another user on Reddit has mentioned that the Hydrogen OS beta mentions, in its changelog, that the clipboard data is sent to servers for smart clipboard recognition in club to provide contextual buttons to the user when they copied data into their clipboard.