Lenovo pops up tips on its tablets. And by tips, Lenovo means: Unacceptable ads
- Reference: 1630708326
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/09/03/lenovo_indelible_adware/
- Source link:
One customer [1]took to the manufacturer's support forum late last month to say they were somewhat miffed to see an ad suddenly appear on screen to join Amazon Music on their Android-powered Lenovo Tab P11. The advertisement was generated as a push notification by the bundled Tips app.
“There is no option to dismiss," the fondleslab fondler sighed. "You have to click to find out more. Further, these notifications cannot be disabled, nor can the Lenovo ‘Tips’ app be disabled."
[2]
They went on to say: "This is not a tip. This is a push that is advertising a paid service. I loathe this sort of thing.”
[3]
[4]
Another chipped in: "I have a Lenovo Tab that also has this bloatware virus installed. There's no way to disable the adverts (they call the ads tips, they're not, they're adverts for Amazon music etc.) This is ridiculous, Lenovo, I didn't spend £170 on a tablet to be pumped with ads. Will not buy another Lenovo product."
On Wednesday, a support rep with the username Adriel_Lenovo admitted on the forum that the Tips app is now a permanent fixture. "The Lenovo Tips application cannot be disabled or removed off the Tab P11 since this is a pre installed app itself," the representative wrote, fueling people's frustration. The rep also said it "may" be possible to switch off the ads, sorry, notifications in the Android OS settings, though they didn't sound too sure.
[5]
In any case, on Friday a spokesperson for Lenovo told us:
Our design and UX teams are continuously looking for the best balance between information and experience to maximize end user enjoyment. Lenovo Tips is a system app which allows users to discover features that we believe are useful & meaningful and is designed to be unobtrusive. We take feedback very seriously and at present have no plans to add any further push notifications.
That suggests to us the plug has been pulled on the Tip ads; we've asked Lenovo for explicit confirmation.
This is not the first time Lenovo has had a run-in with its customers about unwanted advertising. In 2015, Lenovo was hit with a barrage of complaints after it was [6]caught shipping laptops with crapware that injected ads into owners' browsers.
Following that backlash, Lenovo agreed that new laptops would no longer be sold with the Superfish software and an update was issued to mute pop-up ads.
At the time, Lenovo's CTO Peter Hortensius [7]told us: "Our goal, in the end, is to make this right," before admitting "it's going to take a long road to earn trust back."
[8]
Within days of customers kicking off back then, the hardware giant issued a further statement that it intended to mend its ways. "The events of last week reinforce the principle that customer experience, security and privacy must be our top priorities," the [9]biz said .
"With this in mind, we will significantly reduce preloaded applications. Our goal is clear: to become the leader in providing cleaner, safer PCs."
Yeah, right. ®
Get our [10]Tech Resources
[1] https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-Android-based-Tablets-and-Phablets/Lenovo-Tips-application-advertising-paid-services-via-notifications/m-p/5094365?page=1
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YTLvf4qNa1iZ0UmOwEhLrwAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YTLvf4qNa1iZ0UmOwEhLrwAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YTLvf4qNa1iZ0UmOwEhLrwAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YTLvf4qNa1iZ0UmOwEhLrwAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2015/02/19/superfish_lenovo_spyware/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2015/02/25/lenovo_cto_were_not_the_only_ones_with_a_crapware_problem/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YTLvf4qNa1iZ0UmOwEhLrwAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2015/02/27/lenovo_makes_bold_play_for_the_clean_pc_market_after_superfish_snaufu/
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
You could write a whole book with examples of Lenovo doing this in any of the things they sell.
Burn it to the ground
I don't purchase a computer unless I can wipe it and load from scratch. I was burned by Lenovo and SuperFish and only want a generic experience with computers as a result. Their hardware has been good enough without their extra loaded goodness so they are not forever shunned by me yet.
Technical attack, technical defense
I wonder what the network traffic looks like for getting this "tip" information onto each victim, and particularly what happens when the part that needs to download the largest assets crashes most of the way through. I wonder how they would react to a bot pretending to be an unstable app which continually tries and fails to download their ad, especially if multiple devices started to have trouble with the downloads all day long.
Preinstalled adware is entirely unacceptable on any hardware unless it is stated prominently at the time of purchase, and I wouldn't mind if that were banned too.
A fast one
By the looks of it, China is slowly phasing out their remnants of capitalism as you can read about numerous "crackdowns".
Seems like more Chinese companies will be looking to make a quick buck before things are going to go fully red.
It's cheaper ordering a Lenovo tablet via Lenovo.com than Amazon, so I did - a sudden 33% discount sealed the deal... dispatch was supposed to be "Within 1 or 2 working days"... but I'm stll waiting 12 days later. Useless. I've opened a Paypal case for a refund, because their customer support people are polite but useless.
"System App" bollocks
There is no special privileges an app like this would require. It's only a "system app" because they don't want people to uninstall it.
Any preinstalled software should be installed as a "user app" only.
I've been burnt with one of my android devices (Huawei) - it's actually a decent piece of hardware, let down by crappy software and artificial restrictions. I won't buy again from them, and won't buy another device that I can't root.
Who'd buy a windows PC that doesn't give "admin" access?
Re: "System App" bollocks
Agreed. Samsung anything is now banned in our household because we had otherwise usable tablets that could no longer be used because all the undeleteable and immoveable to sdcard software kept getting updated until it got to the point that apps wouldn't work because they were not the latest version and there was not enough storage to allow them to be updated.
Scumware