Motorola says hijacking of its Amazon app was ‘unintentional’

Motorola says the recently discovered behavior, which resulted in some of its phones sending users to a subsidiary’s tracking site before opening the Amazon app, was “unintentional” and was “immediately corrected.” The company did not explain how the error occurred in the first place.

“Most recently, Motorola acted quickly to resolve the identified issue, which caused some users in the US who launched the Amazon Shopping app to be directed through a web tracking link before opening the app. This behavior was unintentional and resulted in an inconsistent user experience,” said Allison Yee, executive director of product management at Motorola. Edge In a statement. “When the issue was identified, we immediately corrected the routing configuration. Users can now expect all installed applications to run directly as intended.”

the Unusual condition It was first reported by 9to5Google After being spotted by A Reddit user. When you open the Amazon app, the phone first opens the phone’s browser briefly before returning to Amazon. Strangest of all, users were sent to a website that appeared to be linked to fashion influencer Keira Abboud, despite not actually being referenced on any of her other pages. However, that millisecond visit was enough to install a tracking cookie, which in turn added an affiliate code to the user’s shopping session — although, again, it did not match any of Abboud’s other content.

The code wouldn’t make any direct difference to the end user, but it could theoretically allow whoever installed it to take a small percentage of any purchase made. Edge It uses affiliate links similar to Amazon for some of our shopping content, although always with a disclaimer, rather than installing them secretly.

Yi blamed the redirection on the “in-app search and suggestions experience of Moto App Launcher” which was developed using Device Native. It was the Device Native website that Reddit user Trypocopris noticed was being queried over the phone behind the scenes before sending users to kira-abboud.com. The company says On its website They offer “personalized display of mobile ads on the device without sharing user data.” Surprisingly, until yesterday Device Native had a public page listing documentation for the Motorola integration. That page It has now been taken offline, but not before The Internet Archive made a copy.

Motorola did not comment on how the “issue” arose, or whether Device Native was to blame, but it reiterated its commitment to user privacy. “Motorola takes user experience, privacy, and platform safety very seriously and will continue to closely monitor the system to ensure expected behavior across devices,” Yee said.