Tecno phones sold by China in Africa are stealing their data

Thousands of Tecno W2 phones have been found to contain dangerous software

A software that has been found in thousands of mobile phones sold in Africa that has been used to register mobile phones without their consent.

Security technology research firm Upstream has discovered software installed on 53,000 Tecno phones sold in markets in African countries such as Ethiopia, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana and South Africa.

But Transsion, Tecno's mobile phone maker, said the software was installed without his knowledge.

But Upstream says the software is hurting many "less-powerful people".

"The fact that the software is in the hands of the underprivileged people who have bought millions of phones with the software will confirm the current state of the mobile phone market," said Geoffrey Cleaves, president of Secure-D, research division of Upstream.

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The software hides in Android phones and then sends dangerous messages to other companies that the phone needs to be registered, and all of this happens without your knowledge. trust of callers no.

After the phone is successfully registered, it will then download the data uploaded by the caller, which is the way most people in Africa buy data.

In short, Upstream has identified what it calls such "bad behavior" in more than 200,000 Tecno phones.

A separate study by IDC found that Transision Holdings is the leading mobile phone maker in China and the largest mobile phone retailer in Africa.

In response to allegations by the BBC that they were harassing mobile phone users, Tecno Mobile said: "This is a long-standing problem that is already being debated around the world." the solution to the problem on its phones.

Tecno Mobile also said that "we take the privacy of our mobile phone buyers very seriously," and "we evaluate all aspects of the phones we manufacture before they reach their users."

The problem is common

Earlier this year, Malwarebytes announced that it had discovered a similar software for data theft and data loss in a different mobile phone - the MX U686CL. The phone is being marketed to low-income families in the United States.

Then in 2016, Ryan Johnson, a researcher found that more than 700 million Android phones contain software that steals data or harms the phone without their consent.

Google, the maker of the Android software, said it was aware of the problem.

In a statement released last year, Google blamed the companies for displaying the software on Android phones, saying it had caught them weaving software similar to those that unlock the phone by looking at the owner's face and Triada data theft software.

He also said he has worked with phone manufacturers to remove such software from mobile phones that have already entered the market.