Amazon pulls all Blu models from its online store due to fear of backdoor Chinese software

Back in November, we told you that Miami based smartphone manufacturer BLU was one of several companies who had at least one smartphone model compromised by software made by a Chinese company called ADUPS. Allegedly, the software was designed to keep track of the buying decisions made by Chinese smartphone owners by capturing their personal data, and was not meant to appear on U.S. phones.

Since it appears as though the ADUPS software is still collecting data from the users of certain BLU models, Amazon has announced that it has discontinued the listing of the company's handsets from its online web store. However, BLU has responded by stating that there is absolutely no spyware, malware or secret software of any kind inside any of its phones. The company says that originally it was unaware that a small number of its phones did contain a version of the ADUPS OTA. Since BLU did not know about this, it did not contact customers to tell them that the software was collecting phonebook contacts and text messages. One it discovered the privacy issue, Blu had ADUPS turn off the functions on its application that could be considered a privacy breach.

BLU says that it has several policies in place and takes customer security and privacy very seriously. It adds that no security breaches of any kind have been discovered coming from any of its devices. Finally, it is important for consumers to understand that the data collected by the ADUPS application is considered standard by many other smartphone manufacturers. According to Kryptowire, a company hired to monitor the ADUPS application for BLU, the data collection was in line with BLU's Privacy Policy and did not affect the privacy or security of any BLU user.

source: BLU