The ads “should not be appearing on lock-screen interfaces.”
What you need to know
- Huawei recently got caught placing ads on people’s lock screens.
- The ads were for travel site Booking.com.
- Huawei says it’s now removed them.
Thanks to the impending U.S. ban, Huawei’s got a lot on its plate right now. Amidst building its replacement OS for Android and figuring out how it’ll survive without U.S. business arrangements, the company found time to put ads on some users’ lock screens.
People began complaining about these ads on June 12, with multiple people on across the UK, Germany, South Africa, and more showing their lock screen with a Booking.com image and text at the bottom promoting travel deals.
#Huawei has turned the random landscape backgrounds on the lock screen into ads. Wtf fuck this pic.twitter.com/6dAUeu17Jf
— Alex (@ValexWhoa) June 13, 2019
In other words, not a good look at all for Huawei.
Just a couple of days after these complaints came pouring in, Huawei reached out to AC with the following statement:
Dear users, we thank you for your candid comments, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused to your experience.
Please kindly be informed that we have taken down those lock-screen images from our servers, as they should not be appearing on lock-screen interfaces.
For the image/s already downloaded to your phone, you may delete as per following:
1) When the image appears on the screen, slide up from the bottom edge of the screen, and the operation toolbar appears;
2) Click the “Delete” button and click “Remove” in the confirmation box which pops up.
We will continue to improve our services and brings you excellent user experience.
Huawei notes that the ads shouldn’t be appearing on people’s lock screens, but based on the screenshots we saw, it looks like it was perfectly intended.
It’s still unclear how widespread these ad placements were, but at the very least, they should be gone and out of your hair now.
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