Your Motorola phone might be secretly monetizing your Amazon clicks
When you buy a premium phone from a top-tier company like Samsung, Google, or Motorola, you expect a trustworthy software experience. You certainly don’t expect them to intercept Amazon links and reroute them through a sketchy third-party URL before sending users to Amazon with an affiliate code attached. That’s exactly what some Motorola phones are apparently doing.
Reddit user u/Trypocopris recently noticed that his Motorola Razr 60 Ultra wasn’t opening Amazon links normally. Instead of launching the Amazon app directly, the phone briefly routed links through a third-party tracking URL before redirecting to the Amazon app. All of this happens within seconds, and most users will likely never notice it.
After some digging, the Reddit user discovered that his Motorola Razr 60 Ultra was making requests to devicenative.com, a company that serves “personalized, on-device mobile ads,” with the preloaded Smart Feed app handling the redirects.
Based on additional research done by 9to5Google, it appears that a recent Smart Feed update (v2.03.0070) is the culprit. Weirdly enough, they could not reproduce the issue on another Moto phone on which they sideloaded the same app.
Why will Motorola inject third-party Amazon affiliate code?
What’s more bizarre is that the redirect adds an affiliate code that seemingly belongs to a fashion influencer. It’s unclear why Motorola would inject a third-party affiliate code into Amazon links, especially when the code doesn’t match any of the ones publicly used by the influencer. This raises the possibility that the code is being impersonated or spoofed rather than legitimately associated with them.
It could also be that the Smart Feed app has been compromised, leading to this scammy behavior. Or has the increased component pricing forced Motorola to get creative and earn money through indirect affiliate code injection?
If it’s the former, hopefully, Motorola will quickly take action and resolve the issue, as this certainly does not bode well from a trust and safety viewpoint. Dragging this out for too long will only harm Motorola’s reputation.
Until then, if you own a Moto phone, disable the Smart Feed app even if you are not seeing this scammy behavior.
