Motorola recently got caught routing users on some of its phones through an affiliate tracking link before opening the Amazon Shopping app, allowing the connected affiliate to collect a cut of any purchase made during the session. Motorola says the behavior was “unintended” and has been “promptly corrected,” though it didn't explain how it started happening in the first place.
On affected devices, opening the Amazon app would briefly launch the browser, route the user through a couple of third-party domains, including one linked to fashion influencer Kira Abboud, and attach an affiliate code to the shopping session before landing them in Amazon. The behavior was first spotted by a Reddit user and reported by 9to5Google.
Motorola blamed the redirect on an app search feature co-developed with a partner called Device Native, whose site was queried in the background before the redirect, but neither company explained how the issue was introduced.
Various tech publications have traced the full redirect chain:
- Tapping the Amazon icon fired a request to devicenative.com.
- That bounced the traffic through kira-abboud.com (which is not the influencer's primary website).
- Then handed the user to Amazon with the affiliate tag “sramz-kff-008-20” attached.
Notably, that tag doesn't match any of the affiliate codes Kira Abboud uses in her own public links, which suggests that the code wasn't coming from a straightforward influencer deal but from somewhere in the middle of the chain.
There are companies out there that help influencers amplify the reach of their campaigns and earn more commissions, of which they keep a slice. It's not hard to imagine a bad actor somewhere in that ecosystem working with someone on the inside at an app-search partner like Device Native to inject creator codes at the OS level, inflating campaign numbers while the influencers themselves stay none the wiser, simply thinking their relationship with said amplification partner is proving to be fruitful. I'd also guess that Kira was one of many influencers to have their code injected into Motorola phones in this manner, and simply happened to be the related affiliate when this whole controversy was exposed.
To be clear, this is pure speculation. I have no evidence that Kira, Device Native, or any amplification company did anything wrong, and Motorola maintains the whole thing was an unintended misfire it has since corrected. I'm simply describing the incentive landscape that makes this kind of abuse attractive, not accusing anyone of it.
The Verge notes that the affiliate code “wouldn't make any direct difference to the end user, but could theoretically allow whoever installed it to receive a small percentage of any purchase that was made.” However, it most definitely impacted other Amazon Associates, particularly the ones that may have actually been responsible for the sale itself.
For example, if a user was reading a blog or social media post that included an Amazon affiliate link from the creator who made the post, their commission would have been hijacked by Motorola's redirect, which installed a different affiliate's code, as Amazon uses last-click attribution.
The investigation by Motorola should go further than “oops, we fixed it,” and may warrant involvement from government agencies, given the potential for fraud.
