Android smartphone shipped with spyware
Chinese Android smartphone comes with malware pre-installed
This is not good.
And yes, I do know my country’s NSA intercepts packages and plant their own spyware on them. I’m against that too.
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Every time I look at issues like this, I think about the big propaganda push by US officials claiming that China-made communications gear contained back doors and should not be used in the US. In retrospect, that made it a lot easier to ensure that the NSA had native access to American-made hardware, no doubt with NSA-developed back door software.
Continue down this road and we will soon be operating inside walled gardens, barred from direct access to servers in countries the NSA happens to not like.
Sigh.
Yep. Disaster.
It’s important to know from which store the phone ordered. Star are not considered top tier but they have been around for some time.
Also, their comment about price shows that they are not familiar with Chinese smartphone pricing. The price of Star phones are similar to other phones with similar specs and brand reputation.
Who knows how it got in? It could have also been done post-factory, I think, just by reflashing the ROM. Star should look into it at any rate. It severely damages their brand.
Brand new Doogee DG685 Phablet here, bought from Pandawill. Scanning shows it is infected with trojan.sms.fakeinst.ie. The trojan is embedded in its firmware.