- Gender
- Male
- Device
- Nokia 1. Android Go Edition. Android Pie
- Country
- United Kingdom
Hi there,
I thought I would share my experiences with buying cheap Chinese Android devices to serve as a warning and precaution
In February this year I purchased a phone in the UK from a fairly reputable company called Argos. The phone was only £50.00 but as I was recently made redundant, I had little choice. The phone is branded Archos Access 40 but sold in the UK as Alba 4. Archos is a French company who outsource their phone production to Chinese manufacturers.
No sooner did I switch on my phone I commenced to download all the apps I needed such as My Vodafone which is my network provider. I had a pop up appear once I opened up the app to say although my phone is rooted I could still use their services. I knew I hadn't rooted it as I only bought it just an hour prior to this! Other strange occurences started to happen such as my banking app is incompatible with my phone although it more than met the specs required.
Two weeks after this, I noticed a new app suddenly appear on my phone which when checked matched one in the play store which was from an American energy company called SRP M-POWER. I opened up the APK of this app and it turned out to be something very different to the one in the play store. It was running constantly in the background, installing its own plugins to my SD card and using data to send signals in China and Singapore. I would uninstall it and it kept returning within hours. It even had a company called Dongnao appear in list of accounts but not the one in settings, accounts but only appearing when you click on factory reset and Google warning you what accounts you will lose data on if you commenced with factory reset.
Suffice to say I was dealing with a cyber security officer at the real SRP M-POWER who had seen this numerous times. I ended up contacting Archos after me further investigating this as I found out this app was not been installed by play store or package installer but from a system app which would create the APK after firstly rooting the phone using an encrypted SU binary, install a file called libchecker.so and change code in various web browsers to keep a record of everything I did on the internet and send all the data to China.
I spent many weeks having running battles with Archos, sending screenshots of various activities happening on my phone as they flat out refused to believe me until I showed clear evidence where they could deny it no more. Basically my phone was infected by malware called Triada which was inserted in the ROM at manufacturing level.
This is the price for purchasing cheap Chinese devices. Sadly there is always a more expensive price to pay later.
On a more positive note, Archos have admitted full responsibility and are sending me a better more upgraded phone for helping them identify the source of this malware.
Please let my mistakes be a lesson to you all - consider that purchasing a phone at a price that seems too good to be true, will inevitably turn out true later on.
Thanks for reading anyway.
I thought I would share my experiences with buying cheap Chinese Android devices to serve as a warning and precaution
In February this year I purchased a phone in the UK from a fairly reputable company called Argos. The phone was only £50.00 but as I was recently made redundant, I had little choice. The phone is branded Archos Access 40 but sold in the UK as Alba 4. Archos is a French company who outsource their phone production to Chinese manufacturers.
No sooner did I switch on my phone I commenced to download all the apps I needed such as My Vodafone which is my network provider. I had a pop up appear once I opened up the app to say although my phone is rooted I could still use their services. I knew I hadn't rooted it as I only bought it just an hour prior to this! Other strange occurences started to happen such as my banking app is incompatible with my phone although it more than met the specs required.
Two weeks after this, I noticed a new app suddenly appear on my phone which when checked matched one in the play store which was from an American energy company called SRP M-POWER. I opened up the APK of this app and it turned out to be something very different to the one in the play store. It was running constantly in the background, installing its own plugins to my SD card and using data to send signals in China and Singapore. I would uninstall it and it kept returning within hours. It even had a company called Dongnao appear in list of accounts but not the one in settings, accounts but only appearing when you click on factory reset and Google warning you what accounts you will lose data on if you commenced with factory reset.
Suffice to say I was dealing with a cyber security officer at the real SRP M-POWER who had seen this numerous times. I ended up contacting Archos after me further investigating this as I found out this app was not been installed by play store or package installer but from a system app which would create the APK after firstly rooting the phone using an encrypted SU binary, install a file called libchecker.so and change code in various web browsers to keep a record of everything I did on the internet and send all the data to China.
I spent many weeks having running battles with Archos, sending screenshots of various activities happening on my phone as they flat out refused to believe me until I showed clear evidence where they could deny it no more. Basically my phone was infected by malware called Triada which was inserted in the ROM at manufacturing level.
This is the price for purchasing cheap Chinese devices. Sadly there is always a more expensive price to pay later.
On a more positive note, Archos have admitted full responsibility and are sending me a better more upgraded phone for helping them identify the source of this malware.
Please let my mistakes be a lesson to you all - consider that purchasing a phone at a price that seems too good to be true, will inevitably turn out true later on.
Thanks for reading anyway.