Concerned users took to Twitter today to ask for advice after receiving multiple messages from the company that appeared to be a series of random characters. Suggestions that personal information held by the company had been hacked, stolen or compromised were luckily inaccurate.
“I’m guessing somebody is about to get fired at #Oneplus for sending out internal test push messages to their customers’ devices,” one Twitter user noted. Another asked: “What are these strange notifications ? Is my data safe? Is it a misfire of testing in your production environment? Or is it a hack from someone else?”
The company has now clarified that a developer team sent out a mass push notification to OnePlus 7 Pro devices in error.
The Chinese firm, which is becoming a major competitor in the smartphone space, apologized and quickly calmed hacking fears, stressing that no personal customer data was at risk. It said it was “immediately implementing new processes” to make sure the global push notification snafu can’t be repeated.
It said: “As soon as we noticed the mistake, we performed a round of in-depth investigations with the related teams to identify the cause. The push messages occurred while the OxygenOS team was conducting a software test for the upcoming Android Q system update. Due to an error during the testing process, we accidentally pushed a routine test message to some of our OnePlus 7 Pro OxygenOS users.”
Referencing data security, the OnePlus statement continued: “The notification push function is designed mainly as a survey tool to help us better understand our users’ feedback and to further improve the user experience, and is based on the Google FCM (Firebase Cloud Messaging) Protocol. Therefore, we want to reassure that this incident does not indicate any risks for your personal data.”
After a short version of the statement was released, initial reaction was mixed. “I thought someone must have hacked in and viruses are now spreading on Oneplus phones,” a forum member noted. Others appreciated the quick explanation being sent out by the company.
Over on Twitter, one user referenced the unfortunate time a ballistic missile alert had mistakenly been sent to citizens of Hawaii. Back in January last year, that push notification caused significant panic. “I’d say this error was pretty harmless. Could have been much worse,” the person joked.
