A Chinese software company denied on Thursday a New York Times report that the company left a backdoor on its U.S. users' Android phones to send all their text messages to China every 72 hours.
Shanghai Adups Technology Co, a global software provider of end-to-end device management and software solutions to leading firms, told the Global Times that no information associated with the functionality of its software on users' mobile phones, such as text messages, contacts, or phone logs, was disclosed to others.
"We are very regretful to see that some overseas media, without knowing the company's business well, made subjective conjecture and published a distorted report, which caused a bad effect," said the company.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Kyptowire, a mobile security firm, discovered that the Adups software transmitted the full contents of text messages, contact lists, call logs, location information and other data to a Chinese server. The code comes preinstalled on phones and the surveillance is not disclosed to users.
The report also said Adups intentionally designed the software to help a Chinese phone manufacturer monitor its users' behavior, without naming the company.
Adups developed a customized solution based on customers' requirements to screen spam messages and calls and the solution had been applied on some mobile phones produced by Florida-based phone manufacturer BLU Products since June, Adups said. A total of 120,000 mobile phones have been affected, according to The New York Times.
The customized solution collects messages to identify junk texts using back-end aggregated data analysis and it flags texts containing certain language associated with junk texts along with numbers associated with junk calls, not from a user's contacts, said the company.
"The customized function and collection of related information were only to serve to update product's system and optimize its service so that users could access better experience. The company never did it out of any illegal purpose. And the solution has not involved any third party," Adups said in a statement.
On October 28, Adups agreed with BLU to stop the software's operation and any information received from a BLU phone was then deleted, according to the company.
Adups has since apologized for any error in a written statement. "This is a private company that made a mistake," Lily Lim, a lawyer who represents Adups, told the New York Times.
