Smartphone maker Blu Products has had a hard year, dealing with allegations of preloading spyware on its devices more than once in as 12-month span. While last November, Blu had admitted a third-party FOTA software vendor was responsible was transmitting Blu user data to servers in China, the company has refuted the most recent claim, calling it a “false alarm” and announcing its products are back on sale on Amazon after their removal last week by the online retailer.
To recall, Blu had last week come under fire after a report by KrytoWire came to light – the same firm that spotted the user data transmissions last year – claiming that despite the remedial measures employed by the smartphone maker, the Blu Grand M firmware was still transmitting user data to servers in China. Last week, the company refuted this claim in a lengthy statement, but not before Amazon stopped listing its products.
As we mentioned, Blu smartphones are back on sale on Amazon, a fact that the smartphone maker proudly announced on Twitter. The announcement tweet calls the latest ordeal a “false alarm”. The statement it provided to refute the spyware allegations last week claimed that some user is in fact still being collected, but that data was “standard for OTA functionality and basic informational reporting”.
In its own words, Blu explains, “BLU hired Kryptowire in November of 2016 since their first report to regularly monitor the ADUPS application in their devices, and they have since been doing that. The data that is currently being collected is standard for OTA functionally and basic informational reporting. This is in line with every other smartphone device manufacturer in the world. There is nothing out of the ordinary that is being collected, and certainly does not affect any user’s privacy or security. In addition, as per Tom Karygiannis, VP of Kryptowire, the data collection is in line with BLU’s Privacy Policy, and does not constitute any wrong doing by BLU.
“Regarding that some information may be stored in China servers, their privacy policy clearly states that some of the data collected can be stored in servers outside the US, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a server in China. BLU management takes issue with the statement that any server in China is prone to risk while several other multibillion dollar companies and other mobile manufactures such as Huawei and ZTE use them.”
