My phone installed 6 apps on its own (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Assuming Android? Had a similar issue with different apps. Turned out to be something called "Mobile Services" doing this. Some ads also used it to sideload apps. Found an article about this class of software and it's apparently common on phones. Key was to look at the package names (I used the Package Names app). In my case, com.dti.tracfone. disabled THAT app and no more problem.

Reference: http://telstramobileloop.com/what-is-mobile-services-manager/