When Xiaomi was accused of sending user data back to China, it had reverted back with a fairly logical explanation of why the company needed to send that data to China - it was in order to help users back up their contacts, phone settings, among others. Unfortunately for Xiaomi, it has again received negative media thanks to Indian Air Force which has classified Xiaomi smartphones as a security threat of medium severity.
The reason behind this is because according to Chinese laws, the Chinese government can legally access any data stored in servers present within the country whenever required. While this may not be a big issue for commoners like (most of) you and us, it can be a serious threat to people working in sensitive fields like government, defence, industrial research etc.
Xiaomi is known to listen to the complaints or issues it hears about its smartphones (like we saw with the MiUi update it released for Indian users after they reported heating issues with the Redmi 1S), and in this case too, ex-Googler and current Vice President of Xiaomi Global has reverted with how Xiaomi plans to tackle the security allegations it is currently facing.
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| Xiaomi seems to be paying a price for its "Chinese" tag Image Source: Engadget |
Hugo Barra took to Google Plus, where he enjoys a decent following of near 50,000, to announce that Xiaomi has, since early 2014, started migrating its international users' data to Amazon AWS servers in Oregon (USA) and Singapore, instead of the Beijing servers where it currently resides. The data that will be migrated includes Mi Account, Cloud Messaging and Mi Cloud Services. This migration is expected to get completed by the end of this year.
Apart from these, Xiaomi is also migrating its global e-commerce platforms and user data to Amazon AWS. This should be completed by the end of this month and will benefit international users in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan etc.
While these are the immediate measures that Xiaomi is taking, it has more in stores for the coming year. If things go as planned, Xiaomi will be setting up their own service infrastructure in countries like India and Brazil, where Amazon AWS services aren't yet available. For Indian users, having servers set up within the country will mean better speeds while connecting to features that require communication with Xiaomi's servers.
If you belong to the privacy sensitive people and are planning to (or have already bought) a Xiaomi device, you can flash a custom rom like Cyanogenmod to cut off all your phone's communication with the Chinese servers. I am planning to do a detailed guide on how to do that pretty soon.
With that being said, I'm really delighted with the pace that Xiaomi is moving ahead with, and how it is adapting to the requirement and demands of its users. I have been using Xiaomi Redmi 1S since nearly two weeks, and am really happy with its performance. Stay tuned for a detailed review of this device.
