Gionee has been found guilty of placing malware on its smartphones. The company has planted malware on over 20 million of its devices, a report notes. The company has been found guilty in China.
Gionee found guilty of planting malware on over 20 million smartphones
The Chinese court recently notified the public of its decision. A Trojan Horse has been planted on over 20 million smartphones, which resulted in monetary gain from unsolicited ads and various other malicious activities.
Users, of course, had no idea something was going on. Gionee managed to trick them by doing this. Just to be clear, this has been done by the Shenzhen Zhipu Technology Co. Ltd., which is a subsidiary of Gionee.
That Trojan Horse has been pushed to a huge amount of devices via a software update. It was implanted using the Story Lock Screen app. The first devices infected with the ‘Dark Horse Program’ were two years ago, back in December 2018.
The scam started two years ago, and lasted until October 2019
The whole scam lasted until October 2019, and the company earned around $4.2 million in that period of time. It infected 21.75 million smartphones, to be exact, which is a considerable operation. It is also noted that the expenses for that period are around $1.3 million.
Four people were found guilty as part of this trial, Jia Zhengqiant, Pan Qi, Xu Li, and Zhu Yig. They were sentenced from 3 to 3.5 years in prison, and will have to pay a fine of CNY200,000 ($30,000) each.
We haven’t heard of Gionee in a long time. The company did get some bad press at the end of 2018, which is, coincidentally, around the same time this scam started.
Gionee was one step from bankrupcy in November 2018
Back in November 2018, Gionee faced bankruptcy because its chairman lost $1.4 billion in company funds at a Casino. Considering that this scam started in December 2018, perhaps this was the way to accumulate some funds after such a huge loss. We’re only speculating, but the timing sure fits. In any case, Gionee is in deep waters now.
This is surely not the first time we’re seeing something like this. Tecno was found guilty of selling smartphone with malware back in August, and something similar happened with Infinix as well.