AYANEO Pocket DS portable console under scrutiny for automatic screenshots and data transmission. Company cites cache bug, not surveillance. Learn about the issue and updates.
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The portable console AYANEO Pocket DS has come under suspicion for collecting user data after an owner discovered over a thousand automatically generated screenshots on the device. According to the user, these images were being saved by the AYAWindow application and continued to appear even during gameplay.
A report about this issue surfaced on a GitHub page associated with YouTuber Mr. Sujano. The user claims to have found around 1,200 screenshots from various games that were created without their input. This raised concerns that the device might be tracking the owner's activity. Further complicating matters were network activity data: the report's author stated that the app may have transmitted approximately 12 GB of data since November. However, another participant in the discussion, who appears to be affiliated with AYANEO, later clarified that this is not surveillance but rather a cache error.
They explained that the system automatically generates application thumbnails to speed up the interface. Due to a bug, these cached images are not being deleted, causing their number to gradually increase. The company is already aware of the problem and plans to fix it in an upcoming update.
It's also noted that the traffic usage metrics might have been misinterpreted. Since the app uses a system identifier in Android, network statistics combine data from multiple system processes. As a result, the total traffic volume may appear as activity from a single application when it's actually distributed among various system services.
So far, AYANEO has not officially commented on the situation. Media representatives have contacted the company to clarify the cause of the issue and determine whether the person who responded in the discussion is indeed a AYANEO employee.