Ads have started showing up on Huawei phone lock screens and people are furious

[steven36]

Angry users have begun to complain that Huawei is displaying advertisements on the lock screen of its smartphones, seemingly without warning or any sort of announcement. Huawei, for its part, says that it’s not the one placing the ads on people’s phones.

“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. In a tweet, an Honor representative confirmed that Honor isn’t serving ads on Honor phones in any market.

 

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 phone owners would all experience the same issue on the same day, while those on other phones haven’t run into the problem.

 

 

 

A number of people on Reddit reported finding advertisements on their lock screen. One Redditor, who goes by the username Quacksnooze, posted a screenshot of a Booking.com ad that suddenly appeared on their phone.

 

Others 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.

 

People have reason to be upset. At the best of times, advertisements online can be intrusive, and having ads placed on the phone’s lock screen can remove some of the customization and personalization that people get with their phones. It’s not just cheaper phones that are getting ads either — even high-end devices, like the Huawei P20, seem to be getting them.

 

Huawei has come under fire in the U.S. recently: The Trump administration recently blacklisted the company, banning U.S. firms from selling parts or software to it (or buying from it) without prior permission from the government. The move is sure to impact Huawei’s bottom line.

 

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen advertising like this on a smartphone, but there’s usually some sort of trade-off. For example, Amazon serves ads on its Prime-exclusive phones, but you at least get a discount on the phone itself. Some cheaper devices sometimes have ads in an effort to subsidize the cost of the phone for the manufacturer. Xiaomi has placed ads on its phone at times, but this is listed in the company’s Terms of Service that device owners may see ads from time to time. There’s really no excuse, however, to place ads on high-end, expensive phones that customers are paying for — and we wouldn’t be surprised to see customers turn away from Huawei for implementing things like this.

 

Updated on June 13, 2019: Huawei has responded to a request for comment.

 

Source

[jasonliul]

The Huawei subreddit is in a bit of an uproar today, as multiple posts have popped up indicating that the company has started pushing lock screen ads for users of its smartphones, all without the user's permission or awareness.

 

Source

https://www.neowin.net/news/huawei-has-started-sneakily-adding-lock-screen-ads-to-its-phones

https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/13/18678220/huawei-phones-lockscreens-ads-android

[Karlston]

Similar topics merged.

 

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