Honey did it first. That infamous browser extension hijacked affiliate codes from influencers, replacing their links with its own to steal commissions. It caused chaos. Lawsuits followed. Even Google had to step in and tighten up its Chrome extension policies.
Now it seems Motorola is doing the exact same thing.
Or at least, their phones are.
A sketchy redirect
A Reddit user noticed something weird happening on his Motorola Razr Ultra over the weekend. He tapped the Amazon app icon. Nothing normal happened. Instead, the device launched the mobile browser.
It sent him to a URL that looked… well, sketchy. From there, he was quickly dumped into the actual Amazon app, but the session now contained a sneaky affiliate code.
“When I tried to open the Amazon App, it would instead open the device’s browser and redirect me to some weird looking URL which then redirected me to amazon.com with a weird looking affiliate tag attached,” u/Trypocopis wrote on Reddit.
9to5Google jumped in. They replicated the issue on a Moto Razr Fold running Smart Feed version 2.03.070. Interestingly, it didn’t happen on a device with an older version of that software. Nor did it happen on newer Razr phones running different firmware.
The trigger is specific too. You have to launch Amazon from the app drawer.
Open it from your home screen? You’re fine. Tap the widget in Smart Feed? That works too apparently. It’s just the direct icon from the system app list that causes the glitch. Or the feature. Whatever you want to call it.
Who gets the commission?
Here is where it gets bizarre. The redirect isn’t random. It points to a site linked to the name “kira-abboud.” A quick search shows a connection to @kirasfashionfind, a fashion influencer on Instagram.
Did she do this? Did a Motorola employee do this? Or did a bad actor hack a service called devicenative.com? That’s the company whose service was flagged, claiming they offer “personalized on-device mobile ads” without sharing user data.
Convenient.
9to5Google dug deeper and found that neither the URL nor the affiliate code matches anything Kira Abboud has ever shared publicly. So maybe it’s a ghost affiliate? Maybe it’s an ad tech glitch gone wrong. Nobody knows for sure yet.
Motorola hasn’t said a word. Yet.
How to stop it
If you’re worried about your clicks funding a mysterious influencer’s yacht fund, you can stop the redirects.
Turn off Smart Feed.
Go to Settings > Apps > Find Smart Feed > Tap Disable.
9to5Google tested it. The hijacking stopped immediately. Clean slate. No more phantom browser opens. Just your app doing what it’s supposed to do.
Until Motorola explains why their flagship foldable phone needs to talk to devicenative.com to open Amazon, this stays pretty unsettling.
