HMD Admits Some Of Its Nokia 7 Plus Were Indeed Sending User Data To China

HMD Global has been getting a lot of attention by the public after Norway's NRKbeta site discovered that its Nokia 7 Plus send user information to a server located in China. HMD Global already acknowledges this problem and explains that it is because they mis-shipped a Nokia 7 Plus shipment for Chinese users to Norway.

NRKbeta's investigation showed that Nokia 7 Plus phones sent IMEI numbers, MAC addresses and ICCID SIM cards to China, all of which can be used to track users. In addition, the user's location is also collected and sent to the server in China. The rough location information was also sent as the phone sent the ID of the closest cell tower.

According to NRKbeta, this data will be sent every time the phone is turned on, and the incident has been going on for months. HMD acknowledges the above data has been sent to a third party server but claims they are not exploited. "No one can be tracked based on these data," HMD said.

NRKbeta says that the Chinese server in question was belongs to state-owned China Telecom, http://zzhc.vnet.cn. Additionally, HDM Global has been focusing more on the Chinese market as the country often gets Nokia new smartphones before other markets.

HMD Global claimed that this was a mistake and was overcome in February 2019. Currently, according to HMD Global, the patch has been released, and almost all misplaced Nokia 7 Plus models have been patched.

You can check if your phones have the patch or not by Going to Settings > System > About Phone > Move down to “Build Number.” If your phones have “00WW_3_22C_SP05” or “00WW_3_39B_SP03 ”as “Build number”, it is already installed on your devices.

Just fixing this issue probably won't help HMD Global dodge a bullet though. Currently, the Finnish Data Protection Inspector is conducting an investigation of HMD Global to see if it violates the Common European Data Protection Regulations (GDRP). If so, the Finnish-based company may be severely penalized.