Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC) has cleared Xiaomi and 11 other smartphone makers of not complying with local data protection regulations after testing the vendors’ handsets.

The other firms cleared included foreign makers Apple, Samsung, LG, Sony, Huawei and ZTE, and local vendors HTC, Asustek Computer, Far EasTone Telecommunications, Taiwan Mobile and US-based InFocus, whose handsets are made by Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry.

In early December the NCC announced that smartphones from as many as 12 vendors were being investigated for violating the country’s personal information protection act.

The NCC kicked off the investigation in August after Xiaomi was accused by researchers and a government agency in Taiwan of sending unauthorised user data back to its servers in Beijing. The probe was prompted by Finland-based F-Secure publishing a report that said Xiaomi’s handsets used a built-in text messaging app that could send users’ information to the company’s servers without their approval, the Taipei Times said.

Lo Chin-hsien, director of the NCC’s Resources and Technologies Department, told the Times that the commission aims to set test standards for handset information security by the end of next year and will establish procedures to recognise labs qualified to conduct testing. “In the future, all mobile phones that consumers acquire under service contracts will need information security labels,” he said.