HTC Keyboard Ads Likely an Error, But Damage is Already Done (androidcentral.com) 142
An anonymous reader shares a report: Ads in the stock keyboard app on a flagship smartphone added quietly via an app update, which then asks you to pay to remove them. You'd be hard pressed to come up with a more comically villainous thing for a phone manufacturer, or app developer, to pull on its users. Yet that's what's been happening to some HTC phone owners over the past day. HTC 10 owners seem to be worst affected (we're not seeing it on the newer U11 for what it's worth), with the ad bar taking up a good chunk of screen real estate. There's understandable outrage among HTC owners whose phones have started coughing up ads every time they open the keyboard. The consensus, obviously, is that this is not an OK place for ads to be appearing. In a statement, HTC said it was an error, and a fix is underway.
I can think of one thing quite easily. (Score:3, Funny)
Systemd.
I want my $40 back (Score:4, Insightful)
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Where did you find it so cheap? The HTC 10 costs 550 EUR here.
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I used to love HTC phones back in the day, starting with the good old Wallaby, but HD2 was the last one I've bought.
HTC, I will pay you to unlock my bootloader... (Score:2)
...but you will never get a dime from me to remove ads.
I decided to stop buying HTC when they completely refused to unlock the device. I likewise absolutely refuse to run their (poor quality) stock, and we all see the consequences of their OTAs/updates.
Sunshine appears to do quite the business with HTC.
Summary (Score:4, Insightful)
It's way too early in the morning for me to exert this much brainpower trying to decipher such a poorly worded summary.
Re:Summary (Score:5, Funny)
It's way too early in the morning for me to exert this much brainpower trying to decipher such a poorly worded summary.
The summary. Posted to slashdot's front page. Added quietly by an admin. Which then asks for your time to parse it. You'd be hard pressed to come up with a more comically villainous thing for a news site, or an admin, to pull on its users.
Re:Summary (Score:5, Funny)
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Damn. That really does work.
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"Mr. Scott, I want these phones off my ship and mechanical keyboards installed by 19:00"
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"[W]e're...not...seeing it...on the newer U11...for...what it's worth."
Fricking brilliant.
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Someone tried to monetize every key click with intrusive ads. A brilliant idea poorly executed. Better luck next time.*
* Note: I'm only half-way through my skinny vanilla latte for this morning. Someone else might have a better interpretation.
Re:Summary (Score:4, Insightful)
If all of this is so dastardly and important, don't make us work so damn hard to figure it out!
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Agreed. I had to read the first few "sentences" multiple times before I got the gist of it.
This is one of the most poorly written summaries I have seen here, and that's setting the bar pretty low. I am not much for grammar flames, but the point of communications is to communicate, and this isn't accomplishing the goal.
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It's way too early in the morning for me to exert this much brainpower trying to decipher such a poorly worded summary.
Yes, verbs would have been nice. Usually, they are considered "required" in an English sentence.
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Yes, verbs would have been nice. Usually, they are considered "required" in an English sentence.
Yeah, right.
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Yes, verbs would have been nice. Usually, they are considered "required" in an English sentence.
Nonsense.
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Yes, verbs would have been nice. Usually, they are considered "required" in an English sentence.
Nonsense.
Usually. Not always.
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Yes, verbs would have been nice. Usually, they are considered "required" in an English sentence.
Nonsense.
Usually. Not always.
Bravo!
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An error? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not like you can just 'accidentally' code the framework which would support the ads to be played in the first place.
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Exactly. This decision was made high up and rammed through with no user testing.
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Error my ass! (Score:3, Insightful)
"HTC said it was an error, and a fix is underway" - With bullshit lines like that spewing forth every other day, is it any wonder people are fed up with the status quo?
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What's the BS? That it was a mistake? Plainly it was, despite the knee-jerk responses of the butthurt hordes. The BS is that it was let out without a decent check by HTC - the app is apparently a TouchPal app, which is where the mistake probably occurred. Blame HTC for not testing prior to release, or TouchPal(?) for similarly not debranding properly.
And Android users, those free apps aren't 'free'. Ads are the price you pay. Even paid apps monetize further with ads, I know, so choose between the truly mini
Re:Error my ass! (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems more likely to me that HTC made a mistake in underestimating the pushback than in releasing the software.
I am aware of where Android app revenue comes from. I also believe that basic functionality should not require ads without a prior agreement, and that ads should appear only in the apps that place them. The Android apps I use tend not to push ads on me, since I either pay for them or are conveniences for services I do pay for (like the Kindle app).
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Easy fix: root and AdAway... easypeasy.. No more ads..
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TouchPal keyboard is freeware in the Play Store, but throws ads up on your phone unless you pay within the app. There are also versions there like "Touchpal for HTC" which are sponsored by HTC... apparently the TouchPal people updated the HTC version on the Play Store to display ads and the phones dutifully downloaded and installed the update.
My phone (Axon 7) came with TouchPal stock, but I disabled it and intalled gboard because TouchPal seems none too accurate. Just checked and it still doesn't show ads,
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Oops, meant to say "free," not "freeware." If it's any kind of ware, it's adware.
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> With bullshit lines like that spewing forth every other day, is it any wonder people are fed up with the status quo?
What HTC really meant was: . . . a fix is underway . . . but in the meantime, you can pay us to get rid of the ads.
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"It was an error" (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure. Implementing all the code to display ads within the keyboard app just happened because the cat ran over the keyboard.
Oh, you mean it was an error that this crap got rolled out? Thanks for informing me about how the future looks like for HTC customers, then.
I used to love HTC products, now i avoid them.
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Apaprently it's not HTC's app, it's a third-party keyboard which has ads but can get a paid upgrade to ad-free. HTC was supposed to have bundled a paid-up version with each handset, and claim a server-end error failed to recognise that the handsets were paid-up so it served them ads.
Still dubious, but a more believable excuse than "we accidentally wrote a bunch of fully functional code and
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There is something more than a little creepy about a keyboard app talking to a server 'to check things'.
It just gives me the willies. Brave New World, indeed.
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hehe Guess you don't know about Microsoft's latest turd_in_the_punchbowl, called Windows 10 ... or as I call it, Windows NSA Edition....
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Then its HTC's problem. Whether or not their keyboard was developed in-house is exactly the kind of BS that their customers shouldn't have to deal with, in exchange for them paying HTC lots of money. That's how these things traditionally work in business.
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If you read the article (I know, I know) it turns out that HTC outsourced their keyboard to a third party company. That third party company also sells the keyboard software directly on the Google Play store, and has a trial version that's ad supported. Apparently what happened is that somehow the special HTC-only version was accidentally flagged as the trial version.
So that's why the ad support was there (it was always there, because it was for the Google Play version), and that's how the error happened (th
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Clearly some overworked dev meant to use add() rather than ad() in the calculator section of the keyboard. Simple mistake. Happens all the time.
An error (Score:5, Insightful)
Ads don't magically appear by dint of the universe being against us (although, the universe is against us). In order for those ads to appear, some poor developer had to be given the task of adding that feature. Then some other poor fools had to test it and qualify it across multiple hardware platforms. Then it had to get bundled into the software update, and then pushed out to users.
My point is, there were many, many very intentional acts required for this to occur, and almost none of which could conceivably have been an accident or "error". This ass-hattery must be roundly called out and ridiculed. Probably there isn't any legal action indicated, but it might be nice for someone to try.
Re:An error (Score:5, Insightful)
It was intentional, the error was they weren't expecting an outrage...
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I suspect that HTC is just rebranding a third-party keyboard app which has an ad-supported version on some app store (possibly even the Play store) and uses the same code base across versions. I don't think the stock Android keyboard is that horrible, but I'm sure HTC has their reasons for not using it. So the dev probably just left the flag on and never noticed the glitch.
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That's so much worse! That's shows how crap their release process is. Even internal dev testing of the release should have caught that. Can you imagine the number of bugs that could be released from such a process. It would be as bad as a zero day exploit.
My guess is that it was intentional. Some PHB thought up the idea of an additional revenue stream at the last minute and the yesmen couldn't get giddy enough on it. Then they bypassed any sane QA/UAT testing to meet the release date. The mistake was
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There was a better summary of things over on Ars Technica. Basically HTC seems to be using a third party keyboard as the default. HTC device owners should be getting the "paid" version without ads, but somehow or another (I'll refrain from speculating on intent) the "ad supported" mode was triggered.
Re:An error (Score:5, Informative)
You see, the "stock keyboard" was actually a third-party app, which is ad-supported by default.
The HTC version is supposed to be a special ad-free version, but somehow during the latest update the app developers pushed the ad-supported version to HTC devices as well.
If anything, this demonstrates the dangers of bundling apps that you don't directly control.
And who's to say the ad-free version doesn't still track the user or collect personal information? If it wants it could collect all your passwords too!
It was really poor judgement on HTC's part to use such an app for a sensitive component like the stock keyboard.
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The reason you don't need to download a program to type on your PC is simply that it is bundled with the OS. Which is exactly the case with this keyboard app. The difference is that HTC apparently contracted some third party keyboard rather than retheming the AOSP default keyboard, when they decided they wanted to put their own look on it. This choice was probably to save costs as they wouldn't need to update the app themselves. They use a nonstandard one because people judge the value of the phone based on
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Today only Apple and Samsung and Google and MS trailing far behind, off computer consumer sales. This means that other firms have to be creative in monetizing the product.
This is no different from years back when only Apple and MS made money off PC sales. Most people who bought a MS loaded PC never really knew what they were going to get. OEM were trying to meet a price point, so you might have a fast CPU with a FSB so slow that th
"In error" (Score:5, Funny)
Oops, my finger slipped and accidentally all this code to display ads in a rectangular bounding box and get ads from ad servers and a working payment system that allows removing them!
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Damn, those RADs really get out of hand with what they dump automatically into your apps...
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Exactly this. This was planned and put in there. Not by any accident at all.
You have to wonder what other treasures HTC have stuck into unremovable apps on their phones. Next up, a homeland/russian/chinese/korean/popular wannabe tracking module, configured just for your country for your telecoms provider or national security vendor or choice!
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Consumers are idiots (Score:3, Interesting)
Any company that pulls this type of crap should quickly dive into bankruptcy as it loses customers*
The reality is that most customers won't care.
* Note: this was deliberate. As others have pointed out, you don't accidentally put ads into an app. Also, why wasn't it pulled immediately? This was a deliberate attempt to test the reaction to ads in the keyboard app.
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I am soon to be in the market for a new phone and HTC is now off my list of options, and very probably permanently on my $hitlist.
to be on my$list means i will avoid their products wherever reasonably possible. It's exceptionally hard to get off my $list, as bad behavior should not be 'oopsies''d away.
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While I have no doubt the ad code is deliberate in the adverts, I highly doubt it was deliberately targeted at HTC phone owners. Why the hell would you use the keyboard app to display apps when you control the full code to the entire OS?
More likely this was to enable free ad supported versions of HTC's keyboard to be used on other phones (TouchPal keyboard is quite a popular app on the Play Store) and accidentally pushed to HTC phone users as well.
It makes no sense to add these "features" into an easily rep
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It was a mistake. Get over it. It's easy to fix and really didn't do anything but cause folks like you to grab your pitchforks and torches. I'll bet you don't even own an HTC. sheesh.
Annoying yes, suprinsing?, sadly, no (Score:2)
The iPhone popularized the walled garden concept where the manufacturer decides what you can and can't do with your device by limiting what software you're allowed to run. Then Google designed Android to be a vehicle for pushing their services and spying the masses. Then Micr
Ads are not ever OK (Score:1)
Ads are not OK anywhere. Some places are worse than others, but they are never OK. Advertisements chip away at a civil society. They are a destructive force. Our goal should be to eliminate them from the world.
I may slit my wrists. (Score:2)
OMG! The sky is falling! HTC is f***ed! We can never trust them again to fix a minor mistake! It destroys this perfectly awesome phone. I'm crushed.
Oddly for me Kinda sucks... (Score:2)
My wife is Taiwanese... so Taiwan econ stuff actually somewhat resonates with me. HTC is going down the tubes., Now, you have a vicious cycle... losing money, so lets do desperate stuff, that alienates more people, so we get more desperate...
Bye Bye htc, sadly.
Huawei also (Score:2)
Huawei Y3 also had the default keyboard app showing ads after a few weeks of usage. I had to uninstall the keyboard app to get rid of this nuisance.
(we're not seeing it on the newer U11) FAKE NEWS (Score:1)
Come the revolution (Score:2)
Ooops, I accidentally coded... (Score:2)
...a framework for transmitting and displaying ads above the HTC keyboard. My finger must have slipped. Repeatedly. In just the right way. Thousands of times. And then I accidentally compiled and tested the code.
Re:Stick with the iPhone (Score:4, Interesting)
Obvious flamebait, but the amount of advertising on the Android handset I owned got to be so overwhelming that it was one of the major reasons I am back to iPhone, after having given it up hoping for a more open and functional platform. Turned out, it wasn't.
Re:Stick with the iPhone (Score:5, Informative)
THAT, friends, is why you root the shit out of Android and then use an app like AdAway, which uses the /etc/hosts file to block ads, which is why root is required. I tried other adblockers that didnt use the hosts file and none worked worth a damn.. Before I rooted my phone, it was endless ads in EVERYthing, and of course, this crap was eating up my data like mad, for which I pay for what I use (am on Ting.com). Once I rooted and installed AdAway, no more ads, and my data consumption went down signifcantly...
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and the average Android user can do that?
Really?
That's why it is a crapfest but hey, we put up with it because it isn't Apple.
Re:Stick with the iPhone (Score:5, Informative)
All of that said, obtrusive ads should be subject to similar laws as the "do no call" list. A $500 fine for each infraction of a "do not advertise" list would go a long way.
Re:Stick with the iPhone (Score:4, Interesting)
THAT, friends, is why you root the shit out of Android and then use an app like AdAway, which uses the /etc/hosts file to block ads, which is why root is required. I tried other adblockers that didnt use the hosts file and none worked worth a damn.. Before I rooted my phone, it was endless ads in EVERYthing, and of course, this crap was eating up my data like mad, for which I pay for what I use (am on Ting.com). Once I rooted and installed AdAway, no more ads, and my data consumption went down signifcantly...
The problem with this is you lose access to a ton of apps that rely on "SafetyNet". Everything from Pokemon GO to AndroidPay to SnapChat uses SafetyNet and will refuse to run if it can detect that your system image has been modified or if it can detect that you have root access. (In SnapChat's case it only does this when you want to log in, so you can disable root, log in, then root again.) More and more apps are using SafetyNet, and it's fucking awful. It's a cat and mouse game to get root and still pass SafetyNet.
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You'll be using fewer and fewer applications then as more and more applications require a SafetyNet check.
Everything from online banking apps to games require it. Banking apps make no sense when you can get the full functionality (and often more than the app provides) from a web browser on your phone or a PC with absolutely no "security" checks. Games at least make sense, even if I don't like it. They want to prevent cheating and prevent ad blocking.
SnapChat required it in order to prevent people from sa
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Everything from online banking apps to games require it.
Some Slashdot users are so adamant about their freedom that they'll stick to those games that are on F-Droid and even move their accounts from a bank whose app uses SafetyNet to a credit union whose app does not.
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The problem with this is you lose access to a ton of apps that rely on "SafetyNet".
I was going to moderate, as what you say is interesting; however, I should point out that you can do without those apps or you can ensure your phone is just a phone and use those apps on a small tablet or something where the constant barrage of advertisements does not directly affect your ability to communicate.
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APK is that you?
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So I have to buy an Android handset, then I have to root it, and then I have to run adblockers in perpetuity?
Or I could just buy an iPhone and I'm done.
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Buy a Pixel with Project Fi. I don't get ads. I get pure Android.
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Except the plan is really expensive if you don't actively manage data usage (or would be for me at least).
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Right, meanwhile, Apple won't even let you use a real adblocker because of their locked in Safari browser and you're forced to deal with hell from websites that abuse the crap out of it. Granted it's not as bad as a locked-in Android phone, but it's still quite annoying.
I'll stick to my rooted phones where I can remove all the ads, remove the malware and actually have a real firewall on my phone. Also, I like being able to stream music from youtube with the screen off, where a locked Iphone or locked Andr
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Wait, there is LESS crapware on iTunes?
Holy shit, now I gotta see what that android variant is like!
Re:Stick with the iPhone (Score:5, Informative)
I have no ads anywhere other than in browser on sites that have them. Maybe it is because I choose decent apps and pay for them. Instead of downloading every piece of shit freeware on the face of the planet and then complaining about it.
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Funny.
I have no ads anywhere other than in browser on sites that have them. Maybe it is because I choose decent apps and pay for them. Instead of downloading every piece of shit freeware on the face of the planet and then complaining about it.
If your phone vendor "accidentally" put ads into their stock keyboard app...
I guess you need to amend that to choosing decent phone vendors...
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he amount of advertising on the Android handset I owned got to be so overwhelming that it was one of the major reasons I am back to iPhone, after having given it up hoping for a more open and functional platform. Turned out, it wasn't.
This is what the guy you were replying to said. His issue was not the brand new keyboard thing. He is already back at iPhone. His issue is that he is cheap and fucking lazy.
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I'm not cheap. I'll pay more money for quality software.
Which is why I'm using iOS now.
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Whatya gonna do? (Score:1)
The Android is so much cheaper - by a factor of 1/7th the cost or so.
Or you have to sign up for those ridiculous contracts from carriers for a subsidized iPhone and still pay $200 up front.
I paid $119 for a Samsung J1 ACE - it has a removable battery - and it's pretty good.
Although, too many android app developers do not understand that apps do not always need blanket access to every aspect of a phone (I blame laziness and stupidity: not malice). I will not install an app - "free" or not - that requires ac
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Gee, sounds like Windows devs requiring admin privilege to install/maintain apps when they could handle privileges correctly, though that would mean knowing more than they do...
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I take it your time has no value if you think hardware is the only cost of a phone.
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It seems to be only in the USA that you have those stupid contracts.
I on a SIM only deal and pay $15/month. The contract is a rolling one month, not two years and I can use any phone I want. I buy my phones from Pawn Brokers. They are nearly always unlocked but the carrier has to unlock it when asked.
I don't know anyone who still uses a 2yr carrier contract.
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A survey of search terms is hardly a scientific study. There is a persistent rumor that Apple somehow cripples the OS on older models to make people want to upgrade. To me, seeing the search terms spike is not confirmation of the deed, but rather confirmation of the rumor.
An alternative explanation is just that Apple has chosen to support their newer operating systems on older hardware that isn't necessarily powerful enough to run new features well. It's a real catch 22, where if they chose to only release
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Yes, benchmarks should be done on the same hardware+iOS over time. People are asserting that degradation over time, especially close to new hardware releases, is maliciously built in by Apple. But I have yet to see hard evidence that any such degradation even happens in the first place.
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Android is only worth a shit if its rooted and has something like AdAway installed, which uses the /etc/hosts file to actually BLOCK the ad servers.