{"id":478207,"date":"2026-03-16T06:48:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T06:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/478207\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T06:48:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T06:48:20","slug":"we-found-out-what-the-ayaneo-pocket-ds-is-doing-with-your-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/478207\/","title":{"rendered":"We found out what the AYANEO Pocket DS is doing with your data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img class=\"e_lg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"eager\"  title=\"pocket ds ayaneo\"  alt=\"pocket ds ayaneo\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/pocket-ds-ayaneo.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>TL;DR<\/p>\n<p>AYANEO has confirmed that the 1,000+ screenshots were caused by a caching bug that will be fixed soon.<br \/>\nHigh data usage reports were a tracking error caused by the AYAWindow app sharing a UID with the Android system. We independently confirm the shared UID.<br \/>\nFurther, our independent security analysis found no evidence of nefarious data transmission or of private information being shared.<\/p>\n<p>Just yesterday, we reported on a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/ayaneo-pocket-ds-spying-allegations-3648302\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">user accusing AYANEO of spying on them<\/a> on their Pocket DS after finding over 1,000 screenshots and excessive data usage. The GitHub thread eventually received a technical response that explained some of the findings. We can now confirm that the response was from AYANEO itself. Further, we can also independently confirm what the app is doing, and thankfully, it\u2019s not nefarious.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t want to miss the best from Android Authority?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/andauth.co\/AAGooglePreferredSource\" class=\"e_nm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\"><img class=\"e_lg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"  title=\"google preferred source badge light@2x\"  alt=\"google preferred source badge light@2x\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768240152_738_google_preferred_source_badge_light@2x.png\"\/><img class=\"e_lg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"  title=\"google preferred source badge dark@2x\"  alt=\"google preferred source badge dark@2x\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768240152_238_google_preferred_source_badge_dark@2x.png\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Starting off, AYANEO responded to our email with the same comment as seen on GitHub:<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for looking into this and raising the concern. We appreciate privacy-conscious users.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>About the screenshots:<\/p>\n<p>DS has a dual-screen task manager feature that needs to render app thumbnails from the system. This is normal behavior.<br \/>\nHowever, there\u2019s a bug \u2013 the cache isn\u2019t being cleaned up, causing screenshots to accumulate. Our team has identified this issue and will push a fix soon.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>About privacy:<\/p>\n<p>These images are small and stored in the app sandbox, posing no security risk<br \/>\nAYA does NOT upload any of this data<br \/>\nAbout the data traffic: Android calculates traffic by Linux UID. AYAWindow uses the system UID (android.uid.system), so all traffic from apps sharing this UID gets counted together. You can check other apps with the same UID (like \u201cPhone\u201d in Settings) \u2013 they\u2019ll show similar traffic. This is actually total device usage, not just AYAWindow.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I will share further information with you once it becomes available.<\/p>\n<p>The response does not have any new information, beyond implicitly confirming that the GitHub comment was from an AYANEO employee.<\/p>\n<p>Independently, mobile security researcher <a href=\"https:\/\/androiddev.social\/@linuxct\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">linuxct<\/a> confirmed to us that the AYAWindow app does indeed share the UID with the system.<\/p>\n<p><img class=\"e_lg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"  title=\"AYAWindow Android Manifest file\"  alt=\"AYAWindow Android Manifest file\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AYAWindow-Android-Manifest-file.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>This corroborates AYANEO\u2019s claim on shared UID.<\/p>\n<p>Further, linuxct has statically analyzed the AYAWindow app. According to them, AYAWindow doesn\u2019t appear to be sending any private information other than when the app is started by the user, without any user-identifiable information, and only includes data similar to what a Crashlytics-equivalent service would send. The data sent is related to bug debugging, ANRs (App Not Responding), and Crashes.\u00a0In short, AYAWindow doesn\u2019t seem to be doing anything nefarious or out of the ordinary so far with the data it is sending.<\/p>\n<p>We hope AYANEO promptly fixes the cache bug to address this issue and close this chapter completely.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you for being part of our community. Read our\u00a0<a class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-authority-comment-policy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" data-stringify-link=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-authority-comment-policy\/\" data-sk=\"tooltip_parent\">Comment Policy<\/a> before posting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TL;DR AYANEO has confirmed that the 1,000+ screenshots were caused by a caching bug that will be fixed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[13253,20833,2306,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-478207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-authority-insights","9":"tag-ayaneo","10":"tag-mobile","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}