Motorola's Smart Feed Was Hijacking Amazon App Clicks

Motorola phones were quietly intercepting taps on the Amazon Shopping app and routing users through third-party affiliate links before landing them on Amazon, a process that could have earned revenue for whoever owned those affiliate codes every time a purchase was made.

The issue came to light when a Reddit user named Trypocopris reported that clicking the Amazon app on a Razr 60 Ultra would open a browser instead, pass through an unfamiliar URL, and only then land on Amazon. The phone was not malfunctioning in an obvious way. Most users would have noticed nothing wrong at all.

What was happening inside the phone

A system-level app called Smart Feed was intercepting the tap before the Amazon app could open. Smart Feed then handed the action to a service called Device Native Ads, which inserted an affiliate code into the link. The redirect passed through a domain called kira-abboud.com before reaching Amazon. Affiliate codes work by tagging a purchase back to a referring party, so the owner of the affiliate link earns a cut of any resulting sale.

Device Native Ads describes itself as a company that delivers personalized, on-device mobile advertising without collecting user data. Its homepage claims that ad targeting happens entirely on the device so no user data reaches its servers, and on that basis the company has argued that user opt-in is not required. However, technical documentation that has since been removed from its website described SDK permissions including the ability to see every app installed on a device, track which apps are used and how often, and optionally read notifications to improve suggestions. That documentation was archived and remains accessible through the Internet Archive.

Log data posted by the Reddit user and analyzed using AI tools confirmed that Smart Feed registered a tap on the Amazon app, then launched an external URL in Firefox rather than the app itself. The system flag in the log showed this was a permitted background activity launch, meaning the phone's operating system had granted the relevant permission. It was not a rogue process running outside sanctioned boundaries. It was built in.

Motorola's response and what changes now

Motorola's executive director of product management, Allison Yi, said the company acted quickly to resolve the issue after it was identified. Her statement described the behavior as unintended and said it resulted in an inconsistent user experience. No explanation was given for how the redirect system came to be on the phones or which parties had agreed to its deployment. Device Native Ads has not responded publicly.

The episode carries a specific sting because the Razr 60 Ultra retails for around 1,300 dollars. Users paying a premium price for a flagship device were generating affiliate revenue for a third party through ordinary app use, without consent and without notice. The mechanism was invisible unless a user happened to notice an unusual URL flash on screen before the Amazon page loaded.

The ownership context also matters. Motorola has been owned by Lenovo since 2014, when Lenovo acquired the brand from Google. Legend Holdings Corporation, Lenovo's parent company based in Beijing, held a reported 22.92 percent ownership stake as of June 2025. The Reddit user who first flagged the issue expressed surprise at the behavior from a brand at this price point, though they were incorrect in describing Motorola as an American company.

The timing sits awkwardly against a separate announcement from March 2026 in which the GrapheneOS Foundation, known for building a privacy-focused version of Android, announced a partnership with Motorola at Mobile World Congress. GrapheneOS has built its reputation precisely on removing the kind of hidden system-level behavior this incident exposed.

For users, the practical question is whether the fix is complete and whether similar redirect logic exists for other apps or other affiliate networks beyond Amazon. Motorola has not clarified the scope of the issue, which apps were affected, or how long the behavior had been active. Those details matter for understanding whether this was a narrow edge case or a broader monetization layer running across the device.