A report from Lithuania warns that Xiaomi could censor content on their mobiles with a function that is not active in the European Union.
A Lithuanian government cybersecurity organization has launched a notice about Xiaomi mobiles that has aroused some concern. As they have discovered, the brand has the ability to censor or block content on their mobiles through a feature that has not been activated in the European Union and that it could be specifically focused on the Chinese market.
The novelty has been discovered by a Lithuanian organism in some mobiles and it is not kept active, although supposedly it could be used remotely. As reported Reuters, has been localized to multiple devices and is disabled when targeting China.
The system works by blocking keywords and the list that appears is related to conflicts in that country, such as those related to the independence of Taiwan or in reference to Tibet. These are hot topics in China that are rising in tension in recent times.
The list with blocked words is called MyAdBlocklist and supposedly it would be used in different applications such as Cleaner, which leads to think that “the block list could be related to system announcements rather than communications“, they publish in Android Authority.
Still, to understand this discovery further, some context must be provided. The information comes from Lithuania, a country that has been in conflict with China in recent times because of Taiwan. Such is the confrontation that China has demanded that the Lithuanian ambassador leave the country.
Beyond this situation with Xiaomi, it is known that in general brands maintain certain monitoring of user content, like many very popular applications, so these discoveries should not surprise us. The big problem arises when it is verified that content has really been censored or manipulated, especially the political one.