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Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes

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Re: Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes

#111

Post by bookofjoe »

tomaytotomato wrote: post #85
codedokode wrote: post #76

Think how bad the market got. Today we have preinstalled garbage apps like LinkedIn, garbage apps mandated to be preinstalled by the government, ads, cloud accounts, notifications spam, telemetry. This is not only Chinese smartphones, for example Samsung also plays this game. I assume there are Chinese backdoors, American backdoors and national government backdoors on almost every phone. And there seems to be no way…

The paranoia is completely warranted, but there is a solution. Just root your Android phone and put a custom ROM like LineageOS etc If you want a stretch goal try and de-Google yourself, I have tried but failed twice now.

Re: de-Googling yourself:

Goldman Sachs paid $6 million to try to get its [soon-to-be] former chief counsel Kathryn Ruemmler's Google search results highlighting her close friendship and many-years-long association with Jeffrey Epstein off the first few pages of results.

Today, the first result on the first page of a Google search for her is the opening paragraph of her Wikipedia biography:

>Kathryn H. Ruemmler (born April 19, 1971) is an American attorney who was principal deputy White House counsel and then White House Counsel to President Barack Obama.[1] Previously a partner at Latham and Watkins co-chairing its white-collar defense group,[2] Ruemmler joined Goldman Sachs in 2020 and was Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel.[3] She announced her resignation from this position in February 2026, effective at the end of June, over her links to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.[4][5][6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Ruemmler

>How a Secretive Firm Tried (and Failed) to Fix an Epstein Friend’s Tattered Image

https://archive.ph/Biztm

Re: Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes

#112

Post by kotaKat »

hypendev wrote: post #67
xzxz wrote: post #12

I used to choose Motorola devices for a long time but since 2 years when I bought Edge 30 Fusion I started to notice they automatically (without my knowledge) add 3 stupid apps or games about two times a month :/ There is no way to stop it. My kids phones are stuffed with this sh*t.

Motorola's history is so unfortunate. They were a great brand, cool phones, one of early Android players. After being bought out by Google, Motorola had some of the best devices out there with stock android, especially in the budget segment (and loved among android devs).They had one of the best smartwatches in the game at the time - Moto 360 (2014!!). Then, after dropping the Nexus 6, Google stripped the patents and…

> Moto 360

... I was so mad every time Motorola screwed the pooch in this era.

I was a first-gen Moto X user... on Verizon. I didn't get the Lolipop update forever and a day. I was a first-gen Moto Hint owner. We didn't get the wake word update, we got told to buy the Hint 2. And then finally, I was a first-gen Moto 360 owner. We didn't even get Wear OS updates at all. Not WearOS 2, not even WearOS 1.6. Every single first-gen product got immediately dropped for second-gen shit, and we got abandoned.

Re: Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes

#113

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

embedding-shape wrote: post #86
codedokode wrote: post #76

Think how bad the market got. Today we have preinstalled garbage apps like LinkedIn, garbage apps mandated to be preinstalled by the government, ads, cloud accounts, notifications spam, telemetry. This is not only Chinese smartphones, for example Samsung also plays this game. I assume there are Chinese backdoors, American backdoors and national government backdoors on almost every phone. And there seems to be no way…

Not sure what timescale you're referring to when you're talking about "how bad the market got" and "today", but back around 2012 I got my first and last Samsung smartphone, must have been a Galaxy 3 or something, that had all of those problematic things too. It seems like this starting to happen as soon as apps were installable on phones, even iPhones came (and still comes) with a ton of apps you cannot remove regard…

And operators preloading questionable stuff is a much older practice than post-iPhone smartphones. If you had a feature phone in the 2000's, the operator would have customised it one way or another. The iPhone was revolutionary in how much Apple forced the network operators to relinquish control.

Re: Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes

#114

Post by subscribed »

password4321 wrote: post #104
Retr0id wrote: post #100

I recently got a Samsung A07 to run some tests on. It's stunningly cheap at After setting it up, I was surprised (but also not surprised) to see ads on the lock screen. The "feature" is called Glance and while it can be disabled in the settings it took me the help of a video tutorial to actually locate the setting.

On my Motorola G Stylus 2025 ($400 MSRP) I have to disable Glance after every reboot (search Glance in Settings then click Disable and Force Stop). Archive/Delete is disabled. Fuck Glance with all possible fuckery.

Maybe you can disable it with ADB?

Re: Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes

#116

Post by macintux »

pitkali wrote: post #97
microtonal wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand it's hard to defend against plausibly deniable errors that create backdoors, etc. But this would show a complete lack of code review, no?

Code review just means you need an accomplice. It makes it harder, not impossible.

Not even that. Bury it in a sufficiently-large PR and there’s a very good chance it’ll be rubber-stamped because no one wants to take the time to carefully review the entire set of changes.

Re: Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes

#117

Post by u_fucking_dork »

dannyw wrote: post #102
mitchell209 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can delete almost all apps on iOS except the obviously core apps that are necessary for it to function.

You can now. You couldn't do this in the early versions of iOS.

> even iPhones came (and still comes) with a ton of apps you cannot remove regardless of how little you use them

You see, the user you replied to spoke in the present tense, and is addressing the “(and still comes with)” portion of the original comment.

Re: Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes

#118

Post by microtonal »

fg137 wrote: post #108
microtonal wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who outside Apple/Google/Fairphone isn't? Samsung has been shipping the Israeli (IronSource) AppCloud on A series for a while now and people in some regions even spotted it on S-series phones (it'll spy on your usage and install apps). Nothing, which uses clean Android as one of their selling points, started installing something similar (AppServices, presumably also from IronSource given the Aura branding) on various…

OneDrive on some Samsung phones recently started uploading user photos on their own, despite user never granting apps the permission to do so: https://www.reddit.com/r/samsunggalaxy/comments/1t7vqr8/why_... I am getting tired of all these nonsense. At this point, Samsung may be shipping more malware than anyone else on phones

It's sad. Samsung phones with just One UI + Good Lock and without all the crapware would actually be a pretty good phone.

But as long as consumers continue buying, nothing will ever change.

Re: Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes

#119

Post by bushwart »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #90
microtonal wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you are not referring to the company that is pushing AI ads through their system settings, pushing Creator Studio subscription ads through the formerly non-shareware productivity tools, and pushing movie ads through their wallet? Seriously, get a Pixel and install GrapheneOS, or maybe a Fairphone with LineageOS.

"Seriously, get a Pixel and install..." Ah, the Google tax. They can turn the lock of that door (bootloader) when they choose to do so.

But they haven't yet, and if you refuse to give Google money directly there's always the secondhand market.

Re: Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes

#120

Post by Semaphor »

codedokode wrote: post #106
tomaytotomato wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paranoia is completely warranted, but there is a solution. Just root your Android phone and put a custom ROM like LineageOS etc If you want a stretch goal try and de-Google yourself, I have tried but failed twice now.

1) My phone is not officially supported by LineageOS so I will have to port it first. 2) I did not analyze LineageOS yet and how it is different from stock Android, so I need to go through complete diff. > If you want a stretch goal try and de-Google yourself My goal is to have an open source system that is under my full control and doesn't play tricks on my by sending telemetry or collecting forensic databases. Beca…

I’d assume that with such a level of required inspection, you also have quite some security requirements. I’d say at that level nothing works as well as GrapheneOS (though you have to either delay security updates or accept temporarily closed source (they get access to the code only in exchange for not publishing it until X days or something) updates, thanks Google). As that currently requires a Google phone, the only way to get close to your price target would be buying it used.
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