Xiaomi Mi 9 has received a brand new beta update, MIUI 10.9.4.17, which adds a few features on the new device. The highlighted feature is Wi-Fi Probe box protection, which basically protects your smartphone’s Mac addresses from hackers scanning public Wi-Fis.
Apparently, Wi-Fi probe boxes are a big thing in China, where hackers are said to get hold of smartphone user’s information such as Mac addresses via special boxes. These boxes look for smartphones that scan for public Wi-Fi networks and in the process steal their Mac addresses. This year at China’s CCTV 315 Gala, this method of stealing user information was brought into the spotlight.
Xiaomi isn’t the first smartphone to particular address this issue. Huawei revealed last month that its phones running on EMUI 8 and above are already protected. The new update protects the phone by using random Mac addresses when connecting to Wi-Fi networks. Android Pie already has this feature inbuilt, but it’s disabled as default. So, these Chinese companies seem to be keen on activating it on their own skins.
Apart from this, the beta update adds an option to snooze reminders.
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According to XDA, the Wi-Fi Probe Protection feature will be available on betas builds running on Android 8.1 Oreo as well as Android 9 Pie. There’s also digital wellbeing like feature being added to MIUI 10 beta build 9.4.15. This special section in the UI will show you the amount of time spent on each app, the number of times you unlock the phone, and number of notifications from each app, on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
