The true price of a Xiaomi phone

According to security firm F-Secure Oyg, you may be paying more than you know for your Xiaomi products - with your confidential information.

The company allegedly took a brand new REDMI phone, and upon its startup, did the following:

1. Inserted SIM card

2. Connected to WiFi

3. Allowed the GPS location service

4. Added a new contact into the phonebook

5. Send and received an SMS and MMS message

6. Made and received a phone call

They quickly identified the sending of the telco details, IMEI number and phone number to the server, api.account.xiaomi.com reports International Business Times.

Upon connecting to the MI cloud service and repeating the steps, they found that the IMIS details, commonly used to establish a cellular network user's identity, was sent as well.

The news come at an unfortunate time for Xiaomi. Just last week, Hugo Barra had publicly addressed the growing concerns that Xiaomi phones were stealing data from their users.

In his Google + post, he added: " Xiaomi is serious about user privacy and takes all possible steps to ensure our Internet services to privacy policy. We do not upload any personal information and data without the permission of users."

In response to the findings, Barra has stated that the issue revolves around the MIUI cloud service built into the phone, and an upcoming update patch will now make the service purely optional reports Androidheadline.

Xiaomi has recently replaced the dethroned Samsung as the biggest phone maker in China and India, along with a surging popularity with its bang-for-bucks products in Asia.

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