Motorola says hacking of Amazon app partners ‘wasn’t intentional’

Motorola says the recently discovered behavior, which has seen some of its phones send users to a support website before opening the Amazon app, was “unintended” and will be “corrected quickly.” The company did not explain how the bug was initially introduced.

“Recently, Motorola took immediate action to address an issue that was discovered, which caused some users in the US to install the Amazon Shopping app to bypass a web tracking link before opening the app. This behavior was unintended and caused users to experience inconsistencies,” said Allison Yi, Motorola’s director of product management. Seaside in a sentence. “When we discovered the problem, we immediately fixed the navigation settings. Users can now expect all installed applications to open directly as intended.”

The unusual situation it was first reported by 9 to 5 Google after being seen by a A Reddit user. When opening the Amazon app the phone briefly opens the phone’s web browser before returning to Amazon. More shockingly, users were directed to a site that appeared to be linked to fashionista Kira Abboud, although she was not listed on any other site. This second visit was enough to set a tracking cookie, however, which added a contact number to the user – however, nothing else matched Abboud’s content.

The code would not make a direct difference to the user, but it would allow anyone who entered it to receive a small portion of every purchase made. Seaside they use links similar to Amazon’s for our purchases, although they always have a disclaimer, rather than a hidden one.

Yi blamed the improvement on the “app search and suggestion of Moto App Launcher” made by Device Native. It was a Device Native website that Reddit user Trypocopris saw being asked by phone behind the scenes before users were redirected to kira-abboud.com. The company says so on his website that it provides “mobile ads that are on your device without sharing user data.” Interestingly, until yesterday Native Device had a community page documenting its Motorola integration. That page it has now been taken off the internet, though not before The Internet Archive copied it.

Motorola did not comment on how the “problem” started, or whether Native was at fault, but it reiterated its commitment to user privacy. “Motorola takes user information, privacy, and platform integrity seriously and will continue to closely monitor the system to ensure that it meets expectations for all devices,” Yi said.