Motorola smartphones hijack shopping apps to make money from sales

Smartphones such as the Motorola Edge 70 ($599 on Amazon) come with a factory-installed but hidden system app called Motorola Smart Feed. This app is designed to help you discover news, apps and games. As Reddit user Trypocopris has discovered, this app also serves another purpose for Motorola.

The app monitors the user's Internet access in order to recognize when a shopping app is opened. If this is the case, an affiliate code is smuggled into the app so that Motorola subsequently receives a commission on every sale. 9to5Google was able to verify this behavior. As the video embedded below shows, the web browser launches when the Amazon app is supposed to be opened. This browser opens a link with an affiliate code to the Amazon homepage, which then opens the Amazon app.

Users can then browse and buy products on Amazon as usual, except that Motorola receives a commission. Customers do not pay higher prices due to this, but Motorola collects user data without clearly communicating this and also violates the terms of many affiliate programs. According to 9to5Google, this "hijacking" of shopping apps was only recently introduced, as the Smart Feed app in version 2.03.0056 did not generate affiliate links.

It is also unusual that the domain that generates the affiliate code refers to "kira-abboud.com", the domain of a fashion influencer who has no obvious connection to Motorola. While Motorola has not yet officially commented on this incident, the Smart Feed app can be disabled in the system settings under Apps to prevent the redirects.