The recent privacy scare regarding Xiaomi smartphones was just a hype after all as the Indian Air Force (IAF) on Tuesday clarified to IndianExpress.com that the said advisory against using phones from this Chinese brand was about “four to five months old”. That would mean the alert was from before the Xiaomi started selling its phones in India.
By Debashis Sarkar
The Sunday Standard (part of The New Indian Express Group) had on October 19 reported that IAF had issued an alert with ‘medium’ severity rating against the use of Xiaomi smartphones on account of ‘spying’. IndianExpress.com had reported that the IAF alert might have been based on an old report by software security firm F-Secure, which has since been corrected.
“The advisory itself is about four months old. The strange thing is that it has now been pulled out by the media. No new notification has been issued by IAF recently regarding the use of Xiaomi smartphones. The advisory should not be misunderstood as a ban.
There are no restrictions in IAF regarding the use of smartphones from any brand as it is totally for personal usage,” said an officer in the Western Command.
Citing the reason for the advisory he said: “IAF doesn’t keep track of the smartphone market and neither does it recommend any particular brand to its personnel. It was more like a cautionary not… the advisory is nothing serious.” He said similar advisories had been issued before.