The topic Why were Motorola phones hijacking the Amazon app? Here’s what the company says. is currently the subject of lively discussion — readers and analysts are keeping a close eye on developments.
This is taking place in a dynamic environment: companies’ decisions and competitors’ reactions can quickly change the picture.
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Motorola phones were in the spotlight earlier this week when a Redditor discovered rather concerning behavior when opening the Amazon shopping app. Instead of simply opening the app, affected phones would briefly open a browser containing a shady URL before redirecting to an Amazon affiliate link. This made us wonder whether Motorola was stealing affiliate revenue or if something equally concerning was afoot.
The Redditor who originally discovered the issue found that their Razr 60 Ultra was sending a bunch of requests to devicenative.com. Device Native is a Motorola-affiliated ad company. They also found that the issue was triggered by the preloaded Smart Feed app. Meanwhile, 9to5Google spotted the issue on their Razr Fold running version 2.03.0070 of the Smart Feed app. Furthermore, the outlet discovered that the shady URL initially seen in the browser window linked to a fashion influencer’s website.
Motorola has now issued a statement to Android Authority saying that this was “unintended” behavior and that the app should be working properly once again. the company announced that it had teamed up with Device Native to develop an “app search and suggestion experience” for the Moto App Launcher. This feature is meant to help users quickly find and open locally installed apps.
However, it seems like this feature may have resulted in an unforeseen issue:
In other words, Motorola says this was an accident and that users don’t have to do anything to fix the problem. We can understand if you’re skeptical about the company’s claims. But between the seemingly unrelated affiliate links and the obvious browser window that fleetingly opens, this certainly seems like an error rather than malicious and deliberate behavior.
In saying so, this issue does highlight just how much control manufacturers have over their phones. The fact that companies can serve up affiliate links or other content when you try to open an app is pretty concerning. On the bright side, Motorola is teaming up with Graphene OS to launch a smartphone. So people who want a more secure phone free of tracking and analytics should keep an eye on this.
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