Although it is possible to believe that the price of smartphones has a ceiling, the fact is that not all users can afford to spend 1000 euros or more on a mobile phone. Fortunately on Android, there are phones of recognized brands with unbeatable price quality and some of these phones can be bought for 200 euros or much less.
However, there are still users believe that the amount of 200 euros is a large sum of money, and dare to buy devices not only questionable quality, but from unknown brands.
Privacy International ONG is a UK NGO founded to monitor the invasion of privacy by governments and businesses. Well, since we are aware of the event of one of its members, we should be careful with the smartphones we buy at ridiculous prices because they can come with apps and services that endanger our privacy.
The fact is that this person from ONG had to travel to the Philippines. There he discovered that his phone had crashed, so he decided to buy another phone in one of the country's markets. He decided to buy the MyPhone myA2, a phone that is completely unknown in the West, but there was a ridiculous price of only $ 19.
Upon his return to the UK, he and other ONG members decided to analyze the phone in depth and see what was really hiding inside. We can tell you that nothing good.
We start from the ground that the phone has an Android 6.0 system, which is a fairly old version of Google's operating system, and unfortunately has stopped receiving updates and security patches. Similarly, the phone b had the following pre-installed applications and was very suspicious:
MyPhoneRegistration: Application used to register on the phone manufacturer's website.
Pinoy: An app repository that offers services such as news, podcasts, or wallpapers.
Brown Portal: Browser for MyPhone users.
Well, they discovered that MyPhoneRegistration app shares with the company's server private data such as the phone's IMEI number, username, date of birth or gender. On the other hand, Pinoy has access to phone contacts, location, SMS, storage and phone calls. For its part, Brown Portal, an application not available in the Google Play Store, has access to all the images and files of the device. Interestingly, you cannot delete any of these apps from your smartphone.
Therefore, if you wish to save a few dollars when purchasing a mobile device, all of our personal information may be at risk and will also be available by the manufacturer and all those who wish to share or sell that information. We can also see that the price this user really paid is much higher than $ 19 because the company sells his data.