HMD Global responds to reports of Nokia 7 Plus phones sending data to Chinese servers

The Norwegian public broadcaster NRK last week had reported about an apparent data breach related to Nokia 7 Plus units. According to Reuters, parent company HMD Global had “admitted that an unspecified number of Nokia 7 Plus phones had sent data to the Chinese server.” HMD Global has now released an official statement to explain as to what caused the error.
“We have analysed the case at hand and have found that our device activation client meant for our China variant was mistakenly included in the software package of a single batch of Nokia 7 Plus phones. Due to this mistake, these devices were erroneously trying to send device activation data to a third party server,” said the company in an official statement.
NRK in its report claimed that it came to know about the “data breach” issue after a Nokia 7 Plus user contacted them to say his phone often contacted a particular server, sending data packages in an unencrypted format.