Gionee Found Guilty Of InJecting 20 Million Smartphones With Malware

Gionee, a well-known phone brand in China, recently had been involved in a serious case when a subsidiary of this brand was convicted by a Chinese court of profiting users through intentionally infecting malware to more than 20 million smartphones manufactured by this company.

Specifically, according to China Judgement Document Network's report, a trojan horse was found (a malicious program disguised as a regular application) inside more than 20 million Gionee phones. These trojans are installed by Beijing Baice Technology Co., Ltd. which colluded with Shenzhen Zhipu Technology, a subsidiary of Gionee, through software updates using an application called Story Lock Screen. This application is automatically updated without users’ consent.

As per the report, 20 million phones infected with trojan were distributed between December 2018 and October 2019. The malicious application installed in these devices mainly makes profits from displaying advertisements and media on phones, illegally profiting nearly 28 million yuan, which equals to around Rs. 31.57 crore.

From the aforementioned illegal business activity, a Chinese court has found Shenzhen Zhipu Technology to violate the illegal control of computer information systems. The four people behind the activity, Xu Li, Zhu Ying, Jia Zhengqiang, and Pan Qi, were sentenced to 3 to 3.5 years in prison with a fine of 200,000 CNY, equivalent to around Rs. 22.5 lakh.

Although this incident has made many users worried, this was in fact a common thing in the Chinese market, when many smartphone makers sell their phones on the market at extremely low prices in return for exploiting users by various illegal methods. Besides Gionee, Infinix and Tecno were previously convicted of similar malicious business operations.

>>> Nokia 3.4 To Launch In India In Mid-December: Specs, Expected Price, Review