Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

9to5google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 240 posts

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

#151

Post by givinguflac »

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…

Apple changed that years ago, what apps can’t you remove from an iPhone?

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

#152

Post by basisword »

u_fucking_dork wrote: post #117
dannyw wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And they added this ability a DECADE ago.

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

#153

Post by chasil »

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…

You should all be aware that Lenovo (the owner of Motorola Mobility) has some dark moments in its past.

https://www.theregister.com/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nasty...

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

#154

Post by BenjiWiebe »

bookofjoe wrote: post #145
thfuran wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your point is.

Wrote tomaytotomato 3 hours ago: >If you want a stretch goal try and de-Google yourself, I have tried but failed twice now. My point is that even with unlimited resources it's impossible to de-Google yourself.

De-Googling (in this context at least) means not running Google software on your phone. No Google Play Services always running in the background, plus not using Google apps.

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

#155

Post by Larrikin »

skinfaxi wrote: post #138
Larrikin wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give a solution

Don't give your money to these places? HSBC won't let me use my rooted phone either, so guess who lost my business?

Next time we will go to the professional baseball stadium across the street instead.

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

#156

Post by ryukoposting »

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…

> Think how bad the market got.

How bad it's always been? Go find a Windows Recovery image for a Sony Vaio from the 2000s. Prepackaged shitware has always been a thing. I read this article and thought "wow someone finally matched an old Vaio."

That said, I want to hear a statement from Motorola on this. The GrapheneOS phones they announced a few months ago were going to be my "out" from this kind of nonsense. I want confirmation that I'll be able to trust them when it finally gets released.

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

#157

Post by ryukoposting »

chasil wrote: post #153
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…

You should all be aware that Lenovo (the owner of Motorola Mobility) has some dark moments in its past. https://www.theregister.com/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nasty...

Asus does this on many of their consumer motherboards now, too.

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

#158

Post by qwertytyyuu »

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.

Do the support the razr?

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

#159

Post by wang_li »

givinguflac wrote: post #151
embedding-shape wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apple changed that years ago, what apps can’t you remove from an iPhone?

You can't remove the Phone app from an iPad in iPadOS 26. Even when the iPad in question has no cellular functionality. The best you can do is remove the icon, but you get a dialog telling you it won't be removed.

Which is stupid as I don't want my iPad to be getting every voice mail and imessage and so on that my phone does. They are different devices and serve different purposes. My iPad is totally a media consumption device and I have no interest in it being integrated into my phone's communication functions.

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

#160

Post by rootsudo »

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…

Cheap smartphone path is harder and harder. Unfortunately the pixel series is easiest but comes in double they number for unlocking the bootloader and flashing lineage, etc.

Xiaomi has been ironically the pioneer in this field, but their phones are inaccessible in the USA assuming you’re USA based. The mediatek chipset also is more fun for this over Qualcomm.

Besides suid binaries, the radio firmware and subsequent radios for WiFi and Bluetooth do give out a lot of information and are open to exploitation.

The most opaque and privileged attack surface is often the modem/baseband and vendor diagnostic stack and allow carriers to process local side AT commands.

Qualcomm is more documented, though there are fun discoveries on mediatek I’ve made just using binwalk.

Post reply on HN