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posted by mrpg on Tuesday August 01 2017, @03:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the color-me-unimpressed-and-blue dept.

[...] The online retailing giant told CNET that it was suspending sales of phones from Blu, known for making ultra-cheap handsets, due to a "potential security issue."

The move comes after security firm Kryptowire demonstrated last week how software in Blu's phones collected data and sent it to servers in China without alerting people. Blu defended the software, created by a Chinese company called Shanghai Adups Technology, and denied any wrongdoing. A company spokeswoman said at the time it "has several policies in place which take customer privacy and security seriously." She added there had been no breaches.

[...] "Because security and privacy of our customers is of the utmost importance, all BLU phone models have been made unavailable for purchase on Amazon.com until the issue is resolved," Amazon said in a statement.

[...] Blu was one of the key participants in Amazon's "Prime Exclusive Phones" program, which offered steep discounts on phones to its members in exchange for ads on their lockscreen. Blu is no longer listed on the page.

Blu cited Krytopwire executive Tom Karygiannis as saying the company didn't do anything wrong, although Karygiannis later told CNET that he didn't authorize Blu to make a public statement on his behalf. He confirmed that he spoke to Amazon to give the retailer data on his findings.

Previously:
BLU Phones Secretly Sent Personal Data to China

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday August 01 2017, @03:27PM (5 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday August 01 2017, @03:27PM (#547677) Journal

    Are BLU phones bootloader locked?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @03:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @03:36PM (#547679)

    I think they are not. I remember looking into it a while back, and I believe Blu was one of the companies that DID have some sort of root provisioning (I think it was just an adb or fastboot unlock command without requiring an authorization password, unless you set one.)

    I had seriously considered them except that the models with an open source friendly GPU were the models with low RAM and not so great pricing, and the models with good pricing or sufficient RAM were the ones with non-OS friendly GPUs (later MALI cores, or possibly SGX. I forget.)

  • (Score: 2) by buswolley on Tuesday August 01 2017, @10:31PM (2 children)

    by buswolley (848) on Tuesday August 01 2017, @10:31PM (#547768)

    Custom ROMs have been installed on them (e.g. Lineage OS) but there appears to be a few issues still...If anyone knows a working ROM let me know.

    --
    subicular junctures
    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday August 01 2017, @11:58PM (1 child)

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday August 01 2017, @11:58PM (#547786) Journal

      Is it the GPU that is the issue?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 02 2017, @12:59AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 02 2017, @12:59AM (#547805)

        camera doesnt work i think

  • (Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday August 02 2017, @05:04AM

    by Magic Oddball (3847) on Wednesday August 02 2017, @05:04AM (#547848) Journal

    They supposedly were... I bought an R1HD a few months ago off Amazon specifically because posts on XDA indicated that it was possible to load different ROMs on even the ad-supported model, but every method I tried failed. I also noticed that the basic apps (like Phone/Contacts/etc.) were older/crippled versions which couldn't be upgraded to the fully-featured official releases. I gave up and returned it just before the 30-day mark.