What you need to know
- Motorola was accused of slipping an affiliate link to users’ Amazon purchases when using the app, discovered on its recent 2026 foldables.
- Another report states that the company would briefly throw users into a fake website link (and use a false affiliate code) from a real fashion influencer who utilizes neither.
- Motorola delivered a statement to Android Central, stating that this issue was “unintended” and that it has worked “quickly” to resolve it.
There’s been some questionable activity from Motorola recently regarding its interactions with your Amazon purchases.
This issue was first reported on the Android subreddit by a user with a Razr Ultra 2026. According to their report, the pre-installed “Smart Feed” app supposedly slips into shopping apps to “steal affiliate revenue” (via TechRadar). In practice, the user states that opening the Amazon app on their phone would “instead open the browser and send me to some sketchy looking url, which then redirects to amazon.com with an affiliate code.”
It gets even stranger when the user states they went through their device’s network traffic and found that Motorola was constantly pinging “devicenative.com.” It’s under the assumption that Motorola relied on Device Native for this process. Slipping in an affiliate link would award Moto a cut of your Amazon purchase, even though you have never interacted with an official or appropriate affiliate link from the company. It’s worth noting that it’s not confirmed if this affiliate link was offering a cut to Motorola (which only makes this weirder).
A post by 9to5Google went into more detail, stating the redirect link that would briefly appear in Chrome before your Amazon app sent users to a fake website for a fashion influencer. The publication says that not only does the influencer not list this website on any of their pages, but their affiliate code doesn’t line up, either.
Android Central reached out to Motorola about this issue. The company delivered the following statement:
Motorola and Device Native jointly developed an app search and suggestion experience for the 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 U.S. launching the Amazon Shopping app to be routed through a web tracking link before opening the app. This behavior was unintended and resulted in an inconsistent user experience.
Upon identifying the issue, we promptly corrected the routing configuration. Users can now expect all installed apps to launch directly as intended.
Motorola takes user experience, privacy, and platform integrity seriously and will continue to closely monitor the system to ensure expected behavior across devices.
We are committed to responsible disclosure, and to transparent, collaborative engagement with researchers to identify and address potential issues swiftly.Motorola
This is a curious issue
It’s interesting to say the least that this was a function of the Smart Feed app to begin with—and never caught beforehand. Regardless, much like our friends at TechRadar, we’re also getting strong flashbacks to what Honey’s Chrome extension did. You might’ve seen Honey mentioned everywhere before. Nowadays? Not so much. The platform was caught in some shady affiliate link dealings. During purchases, it would quietly swap out affiliate links from reputable creators and influencers for its own codes.
This would slide over a cut of the purchase to Honey, instead of where it should’ve gone. Since then, Google has severely cracked down on shopping extensions available for Chrome. The company tightened its rules and banned the possibility for shopping extensions to add their own affiliate links or mess with your shopping cookies.
Android Central’s Take
I think we’re all thinking the same thing right now. Motorola’s response to this is… timely. It was quick to “rectify” this issue that users have experienced with its app and the Amazon app. The entire situation is weird, though. I’m not entirely sure this will be the end of it, considering how big of a mess this has become. It’s clashed terribly with users online, and information like this only makes more people raise a brow.
