What you need to know
- Motorola was accused of slipping an affiliate link into users’ Amazon purchases when using the app, discovered in its recent 2026 brochures.
- Another report claims that the company would briefly send users to a fake website link (and use a fake affiliate code) of a real fashion influencer who uses neither.
- Motorola provided a statement to Android Central, stating that this issue was “unintentional” and that it has worked “quickly” to resolve it.
There has been some questionable activity by Motorola recently regarding its interactions with your Amazon purchases.
This issue was first reported in the Android Subreddit by a user with a Razr Ultra 2026. According to their report, the pre-installed “Smart Feed” app allegedly slips into shopping apps to “steal affiliate revenue” (via TechnologyRadar). In practice, the user claims that opening the Amazon app on their phone would “open the browser and send me to a sketchy-looking URL, which then redirects to amazon.com with an affiliate code.”
It gets even stranger when the user claims that he checked his device’s network traffic and found that Motorola was constantly pinging “devicenative.com.” It is assumed that Motorola relied on Device Native for this process. Entering an affiliate link would give Moto a portion of your Amazon purchase, even if you have never interacted with an official or proper affiliate link from the company. It is worth noting that it is not confirmed whether this affiliate link was offering a cut to Motorola (which only makes this more strange).
A publication of 9to5Google went into more detail, stating the redirect link that would briefly appear in Chrome before its Amazon app sent users to a fake website to a fashion influencer. The post says that not only does the influencer not include this website on any of his pages, but his affiliate code also does not match.
Android Central contacted Motorola about this issue. The company delivered the following statement:
Motorola and Device Native jointly developed an app search and suggestion experience for Moto App Launcher, designed to help users quickly find and launch apps they already have installed on their devices. Recently, Motorola acted quickly to resolve an issue that was identified, which caused some users in the US who launched the Amazon Shopping app to be directed through a web tracking link before opening the app. This behavior was unintentional and resulted in an inconsistent user experience. Upon identifying the problem, we quickly corrected the routing configuration. Users can now expect all installed applications to launch directly as expected. Motorola takes user experience, privacy, and platform integrity seriously and will continue to closely monitor the system to ensure expected behavior on all devices. We are committed to responsible disclosure and collaborative, transparent engagement with researchers to quickly identify and address potential issues.
Motorola
This is a curious topic
It’s interesting to say that this was a feature of the Smart Feed app to begin with and was never detected beforehand. Anyway, like our friends at TechRadar, we are also getting strong flashbacks of what The Honey Chrome extension did.. You may have seen Honey mentioned everywhere before. Nowadays? Not so much. The platform got caught up in some shady affiliate link deals. During purchases, she silently swapped affiliate links from reputable creators and influencers for her own codes.
This would pass on a portion of the purchase to Honey, instead of where it should have gone. Google has since cracked down on shopping extensions available for Chrome. The company tightened its rules and banned the ability for shopping extensions to add their own affiliate links or alter your shopping cookies.
Android Central’s opinion
I think we’re all thinking the same thing right now. Motorola’s response to this is… timely. They were quick to “rectify” this issue that users have experienced with their app and the Amazon app. However, the whole situation is strange. I’m not entirely sure this is the end, considering what a big mess it’s become. It has clashed terribly with online users, and information like this only makes more people raise an eyebrow.
