After a setting on one of the company’s cellphones was recently emphasised during a product review, Realme is now under investigation for its data harvesting practises. According to the feature’s description on the phone, it would gather data on the phone’s usage and hardware as well as user and personal data including call and SMS history, calendar events, and location. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will evaluate and examine the allegations made by the user, according to a Centre statement following the sharing of a screenshot of the function on Twitter.
The recently released Realme 11 Pro+ 5G smartphone was reviewed in a video by the YouTube channel Trakin Tech, who discovered a setting called Enhanced Intelligent Services. The assertions made in the video that the feature gathered call records, SMS, and location information were reiterated in a snapshot that Twitter user Rishi Bagree posted on Twitter on Friday.
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Minister of State for Information Technology and Electronics Rajeev Chandrasekhar quoted tweeted the user’s message shortly after the Enhanced Intelligent Services feature on Realme smartphones was spotted on Twitter and said that MeitY will have it examined and reviewed.
Similar to other smartphone makers, Realme gathers information from customers in order to offer a variety of services and features. According to the feature’s explanation in the Settings app from the Chinese smartphone maker, it optimises device operations based on how the device is used.
Users must go to Settings > Additional Settings > System Services > Enhanced Intelligent Services in order to access this feature’s setting because it is turned on by default. The Enhanced Intelligent Services were confirmed by Gadgets 360 to be activated by default on Realme devices using Realme UI 4.0.
Responses from Realme :
The smartphone manufacturer said on Monday that the Enhanced Intelligent Services function does not gather information regarding SMS, phone calls, or calendar information. The data is processed and secured on the user’s device, according to the business. In addition, Realme said that the business complies with all applicable laws and rules.
“With regard to the concern mentioned, we would want to make it clear that the expanded intelligent services feature is connected to maximising device utilisation to guarantee that customers have better battery life and temperature performance. We do not, however, gather any information on SMS, phone calls, schedules, etc., notwithstanding the current description.
Every piece of information that is handled by this service is encrypted, and it is rigorously adhered to the security protocols of Android on the user’s device, where it is kept in encrypted hardware. There is no sharing or online storage of this data; everything is kept entirely on the device. We lay a lot of importance on protecting user privacy, and the expanded intelligent services feature may be manually switched on or off depending on what the customers need.