NRK: nokia phones sent user data to China

NRK was contacted in February by a reader who discovered something strange with her cell phone. Every time he turned on, locked up, or activated the screen on his phone was sent information about his geographic position, the SIM card number and phone's serial number to a server in China.

After the discovery, he took contact with the Norwegian broadcasting corporation (NRK, which, in turn, have tried to determine who owned the current server. The tracks led to China's state telecommunications company, China Telecom, however, announced that they could not help NRK on.

through a digital platform for developers says to NRK that it is likely that China Telecom is using a code for data acquisition designed for the chinese market, but that the accidentally distributed in Nokia 7 Plus phones even beyond the country's borders.

the HMD Global, the Finnish company that produced and owns the Nokia's model, has not wanted to comment on this theory, and do not, nor respond to questions about who owns the current server.

they have, However, confirmed to NRK that an unspecified number of phones have sent data to the server in China, after ”an error in one edition of the model paketeringsprocess for the software”. According to the company, they tried to present the phones then send aktiveringsdata to a foreign server, but the data should never have processats and not shared with third parties. A software update that'll correct the errors was sent out in February, according to the HMD of the Global.

-a model sold extra lot in China since its launch at the beginning of last year. HMD Global has not wanted to answer whether the data transfers was a requirement by China to allow sales in the country.

Dirk Wetter, a security analyst who conducted parallel investigations of the same suspect transfers, writes in an e-mail to NRK that there could be a conscious action by an operator with access to Nokia's internal systems, rather than a random mistake.

transferred can not be used to identify persons, which Torgeir Waterhouse, director of internet and new media at the trade organization ICT Norway, do not agree with.

" this is dramatically. There is no doubt that this data can identify and monitor individual people, " he says to NRK.

Reijo Aarnio announced on Thursday that they will launch an investigation into the data.

" I got the information of the Norwegian media company, and after talking with our IT people, we have now started an investigation. Initially it looks quite serious, " he says to the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.