Help Unknown Data being sent to "China Unicom Beijing" as per Nowsecure app report

[bored2deth]

Hi,
I own a nexus 5 on T-Mobile. Just installed the NowSecure App and it shows that there is data being transmitted by "Operating System" over an unsecure link to "China Unicom Beijing" in China.

Not sure what is being sent or what app / OS service is doing this ..

Any leads are appreciated !!

 

[codesplice]

Hi @bored2deth, and welcome to Android Forums
I'm not familiar with the NowSecure app, but you may want to try the free Network Connections app. It's able to tell you exactly what app is transmitting data to what servers.

 

[mikedt]

Are you using any Chinese web browsers, such as UC browser, Boat, Dolphin or Baidu browser? Also many apps and games come from China, especially free ones, that could be pinging servers back home. Have you got any third-party app stores installed, like 1Mobile or Mobogenie?

You got a Nexus and not a Chinese device, so it's very unlikely to be the OS itself doing it. Likely something you have installed. Many apps and games do send telemetry data, usage stats, checking for updates, etc. directly to servers in their country of origin.

BTW China Unicom is my ISP. so quite used to things communicating with servers in Beijing.. LOL

 

[El Presidente]

ES File Explorer also sends data to servers in China, so if you've that installed, it might well be that.

Codesplices suggestion should help you out though.

 

[Kevin Swartz]

Hi,
I own a nexus 5 on T-Mobile. Just installed the NowSecure App and it shows that there is data being transmitted by "Operating System" over an unsecure link to "China Unicom Beijing" in China.

Not sure what is being sent or what app / OS service is doing this ..

Any leads are appreciated !!

Hi @bored2deth,

Thanks for using the NowSecure Mobile app.

@mikedt is correct - it's likely not the OS itself. The OS sometimes makes calls on behalf of other apps. Over the next few days, keep using your device and your apps as normal and monitor the 'Countries' tab in the NowSecure Mobile app. The app sending data to China should show there with regular use.

If after a few days 'Operating System' is the only thing that's still showing under 'China', please contact us at support@nowsecure.com, and we would be happy to look into the issue further.

To get even deeper into the traffic from your device and apps, you can also view even more detailed information in your web dashboard (https://app.viaprotect.com/). The top image is from the web dashboards showing detailed information of apps sending data to China, while the second image shows all countries for a particular device.

Best regards and Happy New Year,

Kevin Swartz
Marketing Manager, NowSecure

 

[chanchan05]

Well, you could look at the developers of apps you have and see who is related to Unicom. Sounds close to UniDocs (makers of ezPDF), who has , IIRC, a send usage info to servers option.

 

[mikedt]

China Unicom 中国联通 is a telco, cellular carrier, ISP, and data services provider. Basically the Chinese equivalent of Verizon, AT&T, British Telecom or Deutsche Telekom(T-Mobile). There's many apps and games from China that could be using Unicom's data centres in Beijing. We had a post last month about some app communicating with AliYun in China, AliYun being Alibaba's cloud services, rather like Amazon S3.