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Very disturbing

mikedt said:
My take away from this is certainly not "outrage", it's more like that, Assurance Wireless needs to be more choosy about who supplies their phones. And only use reputable suppliers, and not whatever fly-by-night operations.
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Exactly.
In reality, this sort of thing would be much more expected on a free phone rather than an upgrade paid for by the user.

I mean, it might even be expected on the free phone.
 
puppykickr said:
Exactly.
In reality, this sort of thing would be much more expected on a free phone rather than an upgrade paid for by the user.

I mean, it might even be expected on the free phone.
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It shouldn't be like that. I've studied the article that @MoodyBlues posted. And what I think happened Assurance Wireless had this "U686CL" phone supplied by some no-name Hong Kong trading company, that's since vanished, The actual OEM who put the malware on there is unknown. So I'm pretty sure Assurance Wireless wouldn't have been aware of its hidden nasty.

There's plenty of reputable known OEMs that will supply phones to carriers, in all budgets, like TCL, Hisense, Coolpad.

There are lessons to be learned I think, but it's certainly not outrageous and shocking IMO.
 
Yeah, I'd met this story before (Ars weren't the only people to spot this). I don't think there's any Government involvement in this problem. Probably not even Sprint/Virgin deliberately doing it (though if they got a cut of the income from any adware installed I might be more suspicious). My guess is the same as Mike's: they were looking for something cheap so that they could maximise their profits from this scheme and didn't give it much consideration beyond that.

Due diligence eats into profits after all, and if there were a problem these are customers who can't take their business elsewhere, can't afford to sue and will probably blame the Government rather than Sprint anyway.
 
I'm reminded of the speech from the movie Capricorn One with this phone..


...first-class, bona-fide, made-in-America screw-up! The good people from Con-Amalgamate delivered a life-support system cheap enough so they could make a profit on the deal. Works out fine for everybody. Con-Amalgamate makes money. We have our life-support system. Everything's peachy. Except they made a little bit too much profit. We found out two months ago it won't work. You guys would all be dead in three weeks


Seems like Virgin and Assurance Wireless were trying to make a little bit too much profit from govt contracts, by being cheapo with their suppliers.
 
MoodyBlues said:
Not on any of my PCs. Of course, I only use Linux.

But that's not what this is about. I'm guessing you haven't actually read the article I linked to, or read it in its entirety. It's a hugely different issue than bloatware...
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:) Not on my phone either as I have root and AdAway. I don't have Linux and my Laptop is filled with adds :(
 
puppykickr said:
The insidiousness is that apps and other things can be downloaded without your consent.

The same reason (among others) I won't use Brave browser.

Also, this is not a free phone provided by the carrier. It is $35, paid by the consumer. So the service is subsidized, not the phone.
Add to this the fact that the phone is bricked if you disable this covert action, and you pretty much have the definition of insidious.
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Thank you, PK. Well said.
 
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