Forum Discussion
T-Mobile Downloaded Crapware
I closed all my applications before I went to bed last night. I woke up in the morning and had two notifications from T-mobile. The first one listed a bunch of applications it had installed and the second wanted me to restart my phone to finish the install. I immediately deleted all of the apps, which were (as I best recall) CandyCrush, T*mu, and three other games that I've never heard of. I called and talked with a representative who said this was "alarming." He said he was checking the security features on my phone and resetting some things and the call dropped (as usual). I have Malware Bytes running all the time and I ran a new scan after restarting my phone. Anyone else getting this junk from T-Mobile?
A week or so ago, I had installed T-Mobile's new app but immediately deleted it as it wants permissions to everything. I'm really particular about what apps I download and always check the country of origin, permissions, encryption, and privacy policy first. I use advanced credentials on all my accounts, 2FA everywhere I can, and security keys. What's going on?!
After more back-and-forth with T-Mobile and being handed off to Samsung, I found out that this is caused by T-mobile app selector and T-mobile Device Manager. I sniffed the connections and sure enough, these two apps are downloading crapware (games and T^mu). In addition, they share your usage data with Unity, the app developer. These applications are supposedly used to "make it easier" to find applications you might want. T-Mobile insists that App Selector is an Android module but it was the one with the active connection when the games were downloaded. Device manager connected with T-Mobile sites. Samsung was able to deactivate App Selector but it's very complicated to remove. Same with Device Manager.
These apps were designed to run when you're setting up a new device. I didn't install them and the App Selector is part of the Android system that comes with the new phones. It runs every 45 days. You can't control much in terms of permissions and notifications and I only had the option to force-stop them and disable them. Some circles consider both of these applications bloatware.I buy my phones from the manufacturer so I never had this issue.
I've never had any problems with T-Mobile apps downloading other apps
