Nokia users had a scare moment when news broke about the phones sending data privately to servers in China. It was reported that data collected on the Nokia 7 Plus was later sent to be stored in HMD servers that sits in China, the middle kingdom insists all its peoples data should leave the country. Phone manufacturers will have to ensue they comply to the regulations if they want to push their hardware in the country. But the Nokia phones were not meant for China and somehow was still sending information there.

HMD Global the parent company that makes Nokia phones clarified that a small batch of the Nokia 7 Plus had somehow been mistakenly included the device activation client software package that was meant for the China bound batch. It has also stated that no personally identifiable information has been shared with any third party and the affected devices have been fixed.  Different countries have laws on data privacy which requires citizens information to be retained within the borders of that country, China is very strict about this while Malaysia, Singapore and US do not insist on such tight rules but requires servers storing the data to have the highest of security compliance. In the case of Nokia Phones other than the China variant all other country can find their information stored at HMD Global’s servers in Singapore provided by Amazon Web Services.

But the whole incident reminds everyone the grim nature of data security and how vulnerable we have become to technology. While Nokia assures its users that no data was compromised, the simple mistake on labeling and batch could suddenly see information being channeled to servers other than where it was meant to be directed. More precisely, would anyone other than the Chinese want their private data extracted and stored in the Communist State? Lets ponder on that for a while.