AYANEO has recently been accused of spying on users through the Pocket DS handheld, and that could land the company in some hot water if it isn’t able to handle the situation quickly. Luckily for AYANEO, it seems like that’s exactly what the company is doing. That’s a good thing, considering it has many products in the works, including an upcoming smartphone that it surely wants to be successful.
So, is AYANEO spying on its users? One user thinks it might be possible, but that may not be what’s actually happening. According to the user, one named ghostmanslow, posted on GitHub explaining that they discovered something weird with their Pocket DS when poking around in the files. As they have root access, they were able to see things that a normal user wouldn’t.
Specifically, they found that the Pocket DS was saving gaming screenshots that the user was unaware of. It was also mentioned that the device has transmitted about 12.5GB of data. This would seem troubling to many users no doubt. And while it does look like AYANEO is doing something it shouldn’t, there seems to be a logical explanation.
AYANEO probably isn’t spying, rather, there seems to be a bug
AYANEO hasn’t officially commented on this situation, but it may have actually responded. Over on the GitHub post, a user who goes by the name NOirBRight acknowledges the issues and has given a detailed description of what seems to be happening. This user does so in a way that sounds like how AYANEO would respond.
When it comes to the screenshots, NOirBRight states that the Pocket DS has a dual-screen task manager that needs to render thumbnails. However, a bug is preventing the cache from clearing, which is causing the buildup of screenshots. It’s also stated that AYANEO doesn’t upload any of those images, and they’re said to be stored in the app sandbox, so there’s no security risk, it’s claimed.
There will reportedly be a fix pushed out for this bug soon. As for the transferred data, here’s what NOirBRight had to say: “Android calculates traffic by Linux UID. AYAWindow uses the system UID (android.uid.system), so all traffic from apps sharing this UID gets counted together. You can check other apps with the same UID (like “Phone” in Settings) – they’ll show similar traffic. This is actually total device usage, not just AYAWindow.”
That seems like a reasonable explanation. So, you can rest easy knowing that AYANEO is probably not spying on its users.
The post AYANEO accused of spying on users through its Pocket DS handheld appeared first on Android Headlines.
