this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
26 points (69.1% liked)

techsupport

2449 readers
6 users here now

The Lemmy community will help you with your tech problems and questions about anything here. Do not be shy, we will try to help you.

If something works or if you find a solution to your problem let us know it will be greatly apreciated.

Rules: instance rules + stay on topic

Partnered communities:

You Should Know

Reddit

Software gore

Recommendations

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
26
My phone installed 6 apps on its own (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I found Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify on my home, yet I never even visited their websites on this phone. I never recently installed or visited sus places, I ran a full scan with Kaspersky, found nothing. I disabled "MetaAppInstall" from the settings. I have a Redmi Note 12 Pro. I did some googling and it says for Facebook that it's because of sponsorship. Is this it? You literally can't escape from those apps even by never looking at them because your phone will force them on you? Or is there some other reason? Edit: I can uninstall them, and I did. It's just that they installed themselves and I don't want them to do it again

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I found that changing the region of these devices can significantly change which apps gets installed.

Once I set a Xiaomi phone to "Italy" and it immediately started installing all the usual suspect apps Xiaomi had sponsorship deals with. Then just for fun I switched to "Israel" and almost all of them disappeared, apparently due to some local consumer protection laws or lack of sponsorship for this region, idk

In other words: these sponsorship deals seem to be highly localized.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

that's... exactly what I did. I changed my location to Italy.....

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

interesting!