Chinese smartphone maker Realme is being viewed with suspicion by the central government. Because a Twitter user recently pointed out that the company’s “Enhanced Intelligent Services” feature collects sensitive data like SMS, contact list, live location without the user’s permission, and this feature is enabled on the phone by default.
Minister of State for Information Technology and Electronics Rajeev Chandrasekhar has given his response after learning about the matter. He said that the government would soon start an inquiry into the matter. Moreover, he tagged Realme India in the tweet along with a screenshot saying that it will be tested soon.
The Times of India reported in their report that Realme smartphones have the “Enhanced Intelligent Service” feature enabled by default. So users can disable it if they don’t want to share their data. Note that this feature is not only available in the Realme smartphone, but also in other Android smartphones. It has been reported that this feature can be seen in the smartphones of companies like OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo, iQOO, which trades under BBK Electronics. However, a default feature called “Send Diagnostics Data” equivalent to this feature is also seen in Samsung smartphones.
What is this “Enhanced Intelligent Services” feature of Realme smartphone?
According to the company, this feature optimizes the user’s device performance according to their usage patterns and makes the device usage experience more beautiful. For this, the company sometimes collects some information of the user’s device, such as messages, live location, calendar events, missed calls. And for easy access to this information, this feature is enabled by default. However, if the user wants to turn off this feature, first go to System Services and turn off the Enhanced Intelligent Service feature there.
However, no message has been given by the Realme company in this regard. However, it is known that this feature is very important to improve the service of the phone. For example, the phone’s charging optimization feature sometimes needs to know device location and app usage statistics. And then the Enhanced Intelligent Service feature helps in this task.
In fact, users don’t understand how companies intend to use the data collected from their phones, and how important these features are to improving product service is nowhere clear. So there is no doubt whether the user’s personal data will be shared with third parties.
