Motorola comments on the debacle surrounding hijacked shopping apps

As we reported on Tuesday, Motorola has used the Smart Feed app pre-installed on many Motorola smartphones to insert an affiliate link when opening popular shopping apps such as Amazon. To make this possible, the app had to monitor the network traffic; when a corresponding shopping app was opened, it was first redirected to the browser, which then redirected to the app via a link with an affiliate code.

As a result, Motorola received a commission every time a purchase was made via the shopping app. Motorola has now commented on this incident to Android Authority. According to the statement, this behavior was "unintentional" and would lead to an "inconsistent user experience". Motorola has adjusted the routing configuration of the Smart Feed app so that shopping apps can now be opened without a detour and without an affiliate code.

Motorola claims they take the protection of privacy and the user experience seriously and will continue to monitor the situation. Following this update, smartphones such as the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 ($799 on Amazon) should no longer hijack shopping apps, but Motorola has yet to explain how this incident could have occurred. A bug in Motorola's "app search and recommendations", as the manufacturer calls it, does not explain why affiliate codes were inserted before the apps were opened. Here is the full statement from Motorola:

Recently, Motorola acted quickly to resolve an issue that was identified, which caused some users in the US launching the Amazon Shopping app to be routed through a web tracking link before opening the app. This behavior was unintended and resulted in an inconsistent user experience.

Upon identifying the issue, we promptly corrected the routing configuration. Users can now expect all installed apps to launch directly as intended.

Motorola takes user experience, privacy, and platform integrity seriously and will continue to closely monitor the system to ensure expected behavior across devices.