Built-in Security - HUAWEI Global

HUAWEI ID

You can use your HUAWEI ID to sign in to apps and websites, without ever having to worry that your personal information will be disclosed — the process is secure, transparent, and hassle-free. In the event that you encounter any unexpected issues, we're always on hand to walk you through the solution, with timely notifications that make it a sheer breeze.

Multi-factor authentication

HUAWEI ID incorporates integrated solutions that take the sign-in environment, sign-in credentials, and device into account, for proactive risk detection that prevents unauthorized users from accessing your account sign-in information or personal information.
Security risk controls

We have adopted a number of sophisticated policies to keep your account safe and secure. These include limiting the number of sign-in attempts and password resets, to prevent account hacking, implementing high-level fraud monitoring to identify attacks, and continually reviewing and adjusting policies to account for new security threats.
Account Kit

When you use your HUAWEI ID to sign in to a third-party website or app that has been integrated with Account Kit, the service provider will only be able to access your account information after you have expressly authorized them to do so. Better yet, you can withdraw these authorizations at any time in the account center. In addition, we also provide different user IDs for the third-party apps that you have authorized, in order to isolate data and prevent cross-app tracking.

HUAWEI AppGallery

HUAWEI AppGallery utilizes developer identity verification, four-layer detection system, and other high-level safeguards to protect data throughout the entire process, from app release to download, installation, and usage. We provide privacy tags that give you a clear sense of how apps use personal information, so that you make an informed selection.

App management

HUAWEI AppGallery manages the app release process (including for quick apps) by reviewing the developer's qualifications, performing security checks prior to app release with regular checks after release, testing downloads and installation, providing security safeguards, and tracking user feedback, thus offering end-to-end security assurance. If an app is found in violation of HUAWEI AppGallery's terms with regard to user privacy or security, we will require the developer to make corrections in order for the app to remain available on HUAWEI AppGallery.
App transparency

We provide privacy tags to give you a clear sense of how apps use personal information. By incorporating all of the key information required by apps, including personal data items and data purposes, and presenting it via tags and an intuitive Pinterest-style layout, we have made it easier to view and understand app privacy statements at a glance, so that you can make informed decisions at all times.
App access controls

When you open an app installed from AppGallery for the first time, the privacy policy will appear, clearly stating all of the required permissions and data for each corresponding service. You can then choose to grant or withdraw your consent at any time.

HUAWEI Browser

HUAWEI Browser provides a range of advanced features, including smart anti-tracking, malicious URL detection, privacy mode, ad filter, and smart blocking of automatic app opening and download, which enable you to browse the web to your heart's content with ultimate peace of mind.

Smart anti-tracking

You may have noticed that after viewing a product on a website, you are likely to be bombarded by ads for the product when even you browse other websites. This is because third parties routinely use cookies to track your browsing from website to website. The smart anti-tracking feature of HUAWEI Browser identifies the websites that track your activities, and even synchronizes this information to your phone. You can disable tracking cookies via HUAWEI Browser on your phone, to prevent your online activities from being tracked, without hindering your ability to use such websites.
Your web browsing data will remain private, and never be disclosed to advertisers for commercial purposes.
Malicious URL detection

Some phishing and fraudulent websites use disguised services to induce you to access them, and then use deceptive means to steal personal information. Visiting such websites can result in account theft, personal information being leaked, or other consequences.
We work hand-in-hand with top cyber security providers to test the security of websites. We do not send website URLs that you have visited to any third parties. Instead, we will send the information after it has been decoupled from your identity and anonymized, to ensure that neither Huawei nor the third party is able to obtain the visited website content. If we suspect that a website is engaged in phishing, HUAWEI Browser will inform you of any risks, and remind you to exercise caution before accessing the website.
The malicious URL detection feature in HUAWEI Browser is enabled by default.
Intelligent search

We work closely with third-party search engines to provide you with a high level of service. For content of interest, you can choose to enter a website name, URL, or search keyword, for direct access. We also limit the data that is sent to third parties when cooperating with them, to ensure that your privacy is respected. For example, we do not transfer cookies or precise locations to third parties, and search results are sent only after they have been anonymized, so that you will not be identified by any third party.
Ad filter

We block ads on a website-by-website basis, and display the number of blocked ads in a widget on the address bar. For websites with a large number of ads, the ad blocker is enabled by default. For all other websites, the blocker can be enabled as needed, and you can even manually label and block any ads that you find irritating.
Smart blocking

Smart blocking is automatically enabled for web page browsing. This feature is able to predict whether you need to open a third-party app from a web page, and automatically blocks unnecessary pop-ups asking you about app opening.
Privacy report

We provide privacy reports for individual websites, which include detailed information, such as the number of blocked ads, as well as numbers of times that automatic app opening, automatic APK download, and tracking websites are blocked respectively.

HUAWEI Health

HUAWEI Health is an anytime health assistant that can be tailored to meet your specific needs. You have complete control over how the personal information you have added is used, such as whether it is uploaded to the HUAWEI HiHealth cloud. From there, you can manage or erase the personal health information that you have opted to store on the cloud, whenever you want.

Strict data encryption

Your personal data in the Health app will be stored on your phone using a random key that even Huawei is incapable of decrypting. If you authorize us to collect and process your Health data, it will be transmitted to the HUAWEI HiHealth cloud via HTTPS and encrypted using dynamic keys.
Privacy management centre

The Huawei Health app classifies data in a clear and concise way in the privacy management centre. From there, you can decide which health and fitness data to sync to the cloud. All synced data can be managed or cleared as needed.
Standard OAuth protocols ensure that your personal data remains protected when you choose to allow third-party services to access it. Huawei Health gives you the power to use or share your personal data in any way you see fit.
Wearable device data protection

Setting a lock screen password for your Huawei smart watch helps keep your personal data safe from prying eyes. After enabling Auto-lock, the watch screen will be locked when the watch is not being worn. These safeguards help keep your sensitive and private data, like heart rate and blood pressure, safely stowed away.
Wear Engine

Wear Engine is designed for developers of apps and services running on phones and wearable devices. It allows third-party apps to run seamlessly on your wearable devices when you grant explicit consent, and you can manage your authorisations to these apps in Huawei Health.

Petal Maps

Petal Maps only uses the data stored on your device for the purpose of providing personalized recommendations and services, based on computing that is limited to the device itself. Your data will be linked to random identifiers, rather than your HUAWEI ID, to anonymize personal information and prevent it from being tracked. Data will also be encrypted throughout transmission to ensure that it is not disclosed.

Random identifiers

We always use random identifiers to collect and store your data. When you open and use Petal Maps, your personal information, including your search preferences, places of departure, destinations, route plans, directions, and itineraries, will be linked to random identifiers to ensure that the information is not directly associated with your HUAWEI ID. This anonymizes all personal information and prevents it from being tracked.
Obfuscation

We also obfuscate stored data. For example, we round the longitudes and latitudes of points of interest (POIs) up to two decimal places, to avoid acquiring too precise information about a location and respect your right to privacy.
Abandoning information about the places of departure and destinations

The navigation directions and itinerary information generated during the use of Petal Maps, such as the information about locations within one kilometer of the places of departure and destinations, will be deleted to obfuscate your precise locations and protect your privacy.
End-to-end encryption

We've designed a separate cloud space control button for you within the app, which gives you a greater level of control over where your data is stored. When you select your device as the only storage location, your personal information will be encrypted and accessible only on the device itself. When you need to access the data on another device, the data can also be shared through the cloud. We apply end-to-end encryption technologies during data synchronization to prevent data from being disclosed.
On-device computing

We only collect the data that is absolutely necessary to provide you with a smart, personalized level of service, and such data is only used for computing on the phone itself.
Incognito mode

Our incognito mode is a breakthrough technology that makes security more convenient and automatic than traditional manual deletion of usage records.
When the incognito mode is enabled, you do not need to sign in to your HUAWEI ID, and Petal Maps usage is completely traceless. Search records, route plans, and navigation records, among other data, will not be obtained by developers, uploaded to the cloud, or stored on your device.

Gallery

Gallery applies image indexing on your device, which means that images can be searched for by name or time, and even aggregated to create Highlights. This process is performed entirely on your device, and doesn't alter any images or upload them to the cloud server.

On-device processing

Thanks to image indexing, you can search for images based on name, shooting time, notes, location, or tag. Better yet, indexing groups images taken within a specific time range, and creates mesmerising Highlights. Images are never modified, or uploaded to any cloud service, and all processing is performed on the device itself.

HUAWEI MeeTime

MeeTime only collects and processes data it absolutely needs to provide services. All MeeTime data is encrypted in an end-to-end manner on all relevant devices.

End-to-end encryption

MeeTime is a service that makes it easy to call and message from any device logged in to your HUAWEI ID – from phones, to tablets, Visions, and smart speakers. All MeeTime data is encrypted in an end-to-end manner on all devices. MeeTime only collects and processes the data that it absolutely needs to provide a superior level of service; this data is sent to the Huawei server in encrypted form. If you delete your HUAWEI ID, all data on the server will be immediately deleted as well, giving you absolute peace of mind.
Privacy that travels to any device

MeeTime protects your privacy across devices. For instance, you can set Who can call to Contacts and add contacts for your Vision and speakers separately, so that only these contacts can call you on these devices. Those you have added to your regular MeeTime contacts list can't see your Vision or speakers, or call you on those devices.

HUAWEI AI Life

AI Life only collects and processes the data that it absolutely needs to provide a superior level of service, and all data is transmitted and stored in encrypted form.

Data encryption

AI Life will only collect and process the data it absolutely needs to provide a superior level of service. The data will be transmitted to HUAWEI Mobile Cloud via an encrypted channel and encrypted for storage. When you unlink a device from AI Life, the device data will then be automatically deleted from HUAWEI Mobile Cloud.

Voice Assistant Celia

Celia allows you to wake your device, make a call, check the weather, hail a ride, or find handy info — by simply speaking a command. The AI Voice service built into Celia will only take effect when you enable it, and will ask for your consent when you use the service for the first time. You can withdraw your consent at any future time. Comprehensive privacy and security measures keep all Celia data under wraps and safe.

On-device processing

Personal data is limited to your device without being uploaded to any server, wherever possible. For example, when you open an SMS message or email via voice command, the message or email content will not be sent to any Huawei server. In addition, your voiceprint characteristics, which are only used to recognise voice wakeup commands, is limited to a secure zone within the operating system, and never uploaded to the Huawei server. AI Voice depends on a low-power chipset to remain on standby, always attentive to your wakeup phrase ("Hey, Celia" by default). However, the service will never process your voice information unless it is awakened. The detection of the wakeup phrase is performed entirely on your device, and you can disable the voice wakeup feature in AI Voice at any time.
Data minimization

We pledge to only collect personal data for the purpose of providing services on your behalf. When your personal data needs to be uploaded to the cloud for processing, for example, when you use AI Voice to search the weather, we will only upload your longitude and latitude, or the location name in your voice input, to the server, before sending this info to a third-party service provider. No personal information or device identifiers will be collected during this process, so you can rest assured that your location will not be tracked. All relevant data is encrypted for transmission to provide an extra level of care.

Assistant·TODAY

Assistant·TODAY provides convenient smart reminders and news feeds, as well as a vast array of third- party services. We do our utmost to process all of your personal information locally, on your device itself. When working with third-party service providers, we adopt random identifiers to prevent such partners from being able to determine your identity.

On-device data processing

Assistant·TODAY reminds you of life events and work schedules, such as friends’ birthdays, credit card payment dates, flights, trains, hotel check-ins, and so much more. The information comes from apps like Messaging, Calendar, and Notepad, and is not uploaded to the cloud. Instead, it is only used for the purpose of generating reminder cards on your phone.
Transparency and controllability

The smart reminder service may need to use some of your personal information, but will always clearly inform you of where the information comes from, as well as how the information is being used — ensuring that all services are completely transparent and traceable. You can also enable or disable the smart reminder service, or subscribe to or unsubscribe from a business account. After disabling the service or unsubscribing from a business account, we will no longer use your relevant personal information. We also offer privacy protection settings that can be switched on or off. For example, after enabling the privacy mode, your browsing history will no longer include any information that you have previously browsed, and after disabling location services, you will no longer receive location-based service recommendations.
Data minimization

We are committed to providing you with the highest possible level of service, while adhering to the data minimization principle, which means that we will not share personal information — with service providers — that is irrelevant to the service you are accessing. For example, while our flight reminder card displays detailed information, such as the boarding gate and baggage claim number, we transmit only the flight number and random identifier to third-party service providers, to ensure that you cannot be personally identified.

HUAWEI Mobile Cloud

By storing photos, videos, contacts, and other important data in HUAWEI Mobile Cloud, you can ensure that all of this data is synced to other devices logged in to your HUAWEI ID. HUAWEI Mobile Cloud makes data management easy and secure, thanks to automatic back-ups, cross-device synchronisation, and remote device tracking.

High data reliability

We build and manage data centers around the world in accordance with the most stringent privacy and data security standards in the industry, to ensure that your stored data will never be lost or damaged. We have also deployed data centers across Availability Zones (AZs) to minimize any risk of data loss. If a data center is down due to extreme conditions, other data centers will continue to function as normal, ensuring that services can continue to be accessed.
Multi-layer data encryption

Client-side encryption: Before your data is uploaded to the server, it is encrypted on the device to ensure that no one else can access or obtain it during subsequent transmission and storage.
Transmit encryption: In addition, we use the HT TPS encrypted channel to transmit data, which is widely used in network transactions and payments, preventing data from being intercepted and tampered with.
Drive Kit

Drive Kit is the cloud storage capability provided by Huawei for developers, which makes it easy for you to upload, download, synchronize, view, and search for the data, such as images. videos, and files, in Huawei Drive. Developer apps are able to access your Huawei Drive only upon your consent. You can withdraw your consent and sign in to Huawei Drive to manage your app data at any time. Huawei Drive provides comprehensive security assurance for a wide range of data. All the data stored in Huawei Drive is encrypted during transmission and while being stored on the cloud. Furthermore, no one will be able to access or view the data that you have stored in Huawei Drive without your consent.

Privacy compliance framework

We regard privacy protection as a key pillar of product design. Therefore, we design, develop, operate, and maintain our products in compliance with the goal of protecting user privacy, and continually optimize our products and services to bolster their privacy capabilities. We have established a global privacy compliance framework that is based on the broadly accepted Generally Accepted Privacy Principles (GAPP) and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as local laws and regulations, to meet the full range of privacy needs for a global user base.
Local deployment

We provide products and services through resources and servers deployed around the world, to ensure that users' data is protected in full compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. If local servers are required by laws and data is not allowed to be transferred across borders, users' data will be stored on local servers and operated and maintained by local subsidiaries that are subject to local laws. For example, the personal information of a user in the Chinese mainland will be stored on a server in the Chinese mainland, whereas that of a user in the EU will be stored on a server in the EU.
Data minimization

We insist on only collecting the personal information that is absolutely necessary for providing relevant products and services. Furthermore, we are committed to taking reasonable and feasible measures to minimize the sharing of personal information, and prevent the misuse or disclosure of personal information.
We use the unique device ID as the primary identifier for device data collection, as it cannot be identified by non-Huawei developers. This prevents user data from being shared between developers. We assign random IDs when sharing data with developers, and each developer will obtain different device IDs and user IDs, even for the same user, to ensure that personal data is isolated and not linked with any specific users.
On-device processing

Thanks to the formidable processing capabilities of Huawei devices, we are able to save and preferentially process data on the device itself. Users' personal information will not leave their device, unless certain data has to be transferred to the cloud for processing, to enable a function or provide a service.
Transparency and controllability

We regard privacy as a fundamental right, and insist that users have access to adequate knowledge about how their personal information will be used, and that they are empowered to make decisions about such information on their own.
Whether a user uses an app for the first time or starts using a new function, we will always tell them in a clear manner how the app or service will collect, use, save, share, and transfer their personal information, and will process the personal information only upon their consent. In addition, to help them better understand how personal information is processed, we offer HUAWEI AppGallery privacy tags, which outline how personal information is used via an intuitive Pinterest-style layout.
We provide a one-stop privacy management platform via Privacy Tool to help users better manage their personal information and privacy settings: They can obtain copies of their personal information online, correct or delete account information, decide whether to grant account access permissions to third-party apps, and set preferences for receiving marketing messages, among other actions. This platform is designed to help them use Huawei products and services in a carefree, hassle-free manner.
Identity protection

Our products and services come equipped with a number of innovative privacy protection technologies to minimize Huawei or third party access to users' personal information, helping them conceal their identities and ward off cyberstalkers.
For example, when we work with third parties, we link random identifiers, rather than user IDs, with personal information. The random identifiers are entirely unhelpful with identifying users, even when sent to remote servers. We have used the differential privacy technology in some of our products and services as well. Instead of directly uploading users' original data, this technology generates a summary of the original data, and incorporates random noise into the summary, so that the data cannot be linked with any specific user. All of those technologies are crucial to helping us enhance relevant services and products, prevent the collection of user-related data, and protect user identities.
Data security assurance

User data security is our main priority when we design products.
To safeguard user data, and allow users to enjoy secure HUAWEI ID sign-in, we utilize the following capabilities and technologies: (a) data protection powered by HarmonyOS; (b) security encryption capabilities provided by the SE and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE); (c) industry-leading data protection technologies during service processing and data exchanges; and (d) other technologies used during transmission, service processing, and storage, such as end-to-end encryption, trust relationship authentication for the certificate chain, signatures to prevent data tampering, and mutual trust between devices in a trust circle.
We safeguard users' data — regardless of whether it is stored on the cloud or shared over the internet — by preventing it from being accessed or tampered with by unauthorized parties.