Alcatel, after some recent concerns about malware on some of Smartphone's own, proceeded with a formal response to the problem caused.
ΚAs the mobile phone market continues to evolve, we understand the need to be more proactive in developing applications. After the some recent concerns that have arisen, the application team continues to work rapidly on updates to address security and data issues. In addition to our own work on this, we will temporarily remove the Weather app from the Google Play Store, while working in parallel with an independent security company to further support our efforts and validate the applications we develop. We will send a new update as soon as this process is complete.
Here are some points we want to remind you about our mobile applications:
- Mobile application data is hosted on AWS servers within the US. Any data that turns out to have been sent to servers elsewhere would be unauthorized and our teams are further investigating these allegations.
- We make every effort to keep our customers' personal data safe while respecting the legal framework. Our teams make every effort to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (where GDPR applies) in relation to any product (including software or hardware) wholly owned and developed by TCL and we process personally controlled data by TCL in accordance with our privacy policy.
- All personal data we collect from end users serves specific purposes related to our product. In the Weather app, the IMEI was originally collected to allow the end user to exercise the right to delete his data stored on our server. However, we no longer collect IMEI information and will use Android ID to enable data deletion if requested. Site data is collected to provide a better user experience. The email is collected only if the end user decides to send us his email along with other comments to get in touch with us.
- Each application we develop on our mobile is submitted through VirusTotal, which monitors each application submission with more than 70 different virus detectors to ensure that we provide a secure Google Play Store experience. In addition, each of our applications goes through Google's own security checks before being registered in the Google Play Store.
- We recognize the need to remain vigilant about the security and privacy of our customers and that is why we have removed the SDK third party access from our applications - with the exception of Google and a few other trusted and certified global partners - ensuring that there is no fraud by third parties who may try to use the SDK access in the future.
- We have removed the Weather app from the Google Play Store, while our teams are working to further investigate the concerns that have arisen and at the same time the validation process of our partners is underway. There will be an update when the app is available again in the Play Store, so that our customers can update the new version of the app. It should also be noted that the application was updated to revoke the SDK access to third parties, as soon as we were informed of these concerns and thus prevented unauthorized actions by third parties who had SDK access to our application.
