The Nokia 7 Plus that we had the pleasure of testing last year is an attractive smartphone in many ways. The brand has returned to the smartphone market with a well-oiled strategy. She understood that the majority of users did not necessarily need a smartphone with the latest high-end components in vogue. The Nokia 7 Plus is the perfect example with a sleek design, a Snapdragon 660 processor, good battery life and a good camera, all at the price of 400 dollars. A rate that has since dropped.
The Nokia 7 Plus has for several months transmitted personal data in China
This is the news that somewhat taints the beautiful story of the Nokia 7 Plus. By analyzing the outgoing traffic of the smartphone, the specialists of the Norwegian site NRK discovered that it sent sensitive data to the server zzhc.vnet.cn which is located in China. By pushing their investigations a little further, it turned out that the server belongs to the state operator China Telecom. The data transmitted concerned, among other things, the geolocation, the sim card number and the serial number of the smartphones.
Shortly after the disclosure of the case, HMD Global responded by stating that these data transmissions were due to an error. "We analyzed the case and found that our smartphone activation customer destined for another country was mistakenly included in the software package of a limited number of Nokia 7 Plus devices."
Because of this error, these devices "tried to send" activation data to a third party server, which in this case belongs to a Chinese public operator. "This error has already been identified and corrected in February 2019 by switching the client to the appropriate country variant. All affected smartphones have received this fix and almost all have already installed it, "said HMD.
This defense did not prevent the Finnish body for the protection of personal data, the equivalent of the CNIL in France, to open an investigation against HMD Global. The goal will be, among other things, to determine if other Nokia smartphones have transmitted data and under what conditions.
