Huawei Started Serving Ads On Phone Lock Screens Without Asking Users' Permission (digitaltrends.com) 71
Huawei is reportedly displaying advertisements on the lock screen of its smartphones, seemingly without warning or any sort of announcement. Huawei says that it's doing no such thing. "The ads are not initiated by Huawei. We encourage individuals to check app settings, or follow publicly available directions on how to remove lock screen ads," Huawei said in a statement to Digital Trends. From the report: According to Huawei, the ads are stemming from some third-party services or apps, and not from Huawei itself. For comparison, Huawei pointed to a similar issue that affected Samsung phones about a year ago. That said, it doesn't seem to add up -- after all, the ads are being placed in Huawei's Magazine cycle of wallpapers, and it seems highly coincidental that a number of Huawei users would all experience the same issue on the same day without users of other phones running into the same problem.
A number of users on Reddit reported finding advertisements on their lock screen. One user, who goes by the username Quacksnooze, posted a screenshot of a Booking.com ad that suddenly appeared on their phone. Other users reported getting ads as well. According to the Reddit thread, four images related to Booking.com were added to the Huawei phone's wallpaper rotation, meaning that they would start showing up as wallpapers like any other image. The images could be manually deleted, but it's possible more could be added in the future. You can also get around the issue by not using Huawei's Magazine lock screen wallpaper, but that's a bit of a frustrating solution.
A number of users on Reddit reported finding advertisements on their lock screen. One user, who goes by the username Quacksnooze, posted a screenshot of a Booking.com ad that suddenly appeared on their phone. Other users reported getting ads as well. According to the Reddit thread, four images related to Booking.com were added to the Huawei phone's wallpaper rotation, meaning that they would start showing up as wallpapers like any other image. The images could be manually deleted, but it's possible more could be added in the future. You can also get around the issue by not using Huawei's Magazine lock screen wallpaper, but that's a bit of a frustrating solution.
Re:Not just Huawei (Score:4, Interesting)
USA... after bombing Cambodia during Vietnam war:
"We have not bombed Cambodia. It is all a Communists Dog lie!"
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You misunderstand; Thailand was operating in Cambodia, and the US was training them. Those were just training missions to practice calling in close air support to our allies.
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If you want to make an argument that the USA is just as bad as the Communists, you might want to avoid using a country where the Communists murdered 1.3 million people [wikipedia.org], in the largest genocide since WWII, with intellectual cover provided by socialist academics [wikipedia.org].
If the USA had been willing to put boots on the ground in Cambodia, perhaps they would have been able to prevent the consequences of a Communist revolution - or at least to ameliorate them, as they did in Vietnam.
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Was it communist? Technically it called itself that. In practice it didn't resemble any other communist regime in the world. It was essentially an agrarian dictatorship.
So, literally exactly like other communist countries [wikipedia.org].
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Samsung too. Full screen add when unlocking 100% clean phone (nothing but automatic updates installed from app store or other source)
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Maybe the real problem is people imagining they can't live without animated wallpaper on their phone's lock screen.
Re:Not just Huawei (Score:5, Informative)
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Saw it this morning. iPhone 8. latest OS. Had disabled Siri on lock in prior OS.
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But too bad they didn't fix disabling news ads on the lock screen. I don't care about hockey, but several of us at work have been spam with Apple News ads for hockey this week.
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The fact that they have gone full tilt with locking bootloaders and refusing access is definitely something that raises eyebrows.
Huawei could gain a cult following and a demand like Apple if they cut the crap, allowed unlocking of bootloaders, supported (or even) shipped LineageOS or other ROMs, and made the SoC Linux kernel blobs available. Perhaps even adding a virtualization layer so one could have a home VM, a work VM, neither touches each other with backend deduplication done by VDO, ZFS or btrfs, LUK
Sounds like malware (Score:3, Insightful)
If it were intentional, they'd have just done it to everybody for maximum revenue. And they probably wouldn't have done it with static images, either... it'd be more invasive because that's more profitable. Clearly it's malware targeting Huawei's magazine lock screen option, which other phones aren't as vulnerable to.
Huawei's vulnerability to malware is suggestive that there may be something to the American accusations of backdoors, though. Nothing makes it easier for malware than a phone being designed with government-mandated flaws.
HUAWEI : "Malware? No no, that's impossiburu!" (Score:1, Funny)
HUAWEI : "As a company Huawei takes malware very seriously, and we go to great lengths to make sure the user never notices. Displaying unwanted ads would run counter to our mission, it's probably just your foolish American daughter who installed capitalist pig-throw-bird games and all your fault. Huawei would like to take this opportunity to chastise you for bringing this to our attention and imply you're making it up for Western propaganda. At Huawei, we don't mistakes."
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HUAWEI : "As a company Huawei takes malware very seriously, and we go to great lengths to make sure the user never notices. Displaying unwanted ads would run counter to our mission, it's probably just your foolish American daughter who installed capitalist pig-throw-bird games and all your fault. Huawei would like to take this opportunity to chastise you for bringing this to our attention and imply you're making it up for Western propaganda. At Huawei, we don't mistakes."
Funny? Or insightful?
Both...Both is good!
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Never connect to open wifi from a Huaweii phone and you should be ok.
State-led corporate espionage is sooo 1980's (Score:2)
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At least (Score:3, Funny)
Only source is Reddit? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's what I was thinking. This feels more like a rogue app than a cellphone company doing nefarious things. The headline is grabbed from recent "USA doesn't like this company" sentiments.
Maybe somebody can change the title because ... it isn't true. Bloggers vs journalists.
And what is up with Reddit? Google "news" feed puts Reddit "articles" into my feed all the time and they amount to nothing more than a FB like post. News it aint'
Damn Huawei... (Score:3, Funny)
Et tu Slashdot? (Score:1)
Slashdot has served me ads without asking permission.
Slashdot = Huawei = Tiananmen Square! Oh the humanity!
Good thing freedom loving companies like Microsoft (Score:2)
Don't do this.
https://developer.microsoft.co... [microsoft.com]
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Really useful link, immediately script and cookie blocked what I presumed to be the worst pop up advertising cunts on the planet, useful that M$ lists them all in one place, alongside it's scummy fucking self.
Wow, the sheep have taken slashdot (Score:2)
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The amount of Koolaid drinkers here has expanded exponentially.
I'll stick with my Koolaid, you stick with your Flavor Aid, deal?
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oh, a few reddit users..... (Score:2)
Microsoft (Score:2)
Quacksnooze (Score:1)
Please tell me Quacksnooze is a sleep doctor in real life.