Huawei denies showing lock screen advertisements on its phones

Huawei came under fire earlier today for pushing out vague lock screen advertisements on its phones. The advertisements were first noticed by the Reddit community who shared them with the internet.

The ads seem to show up on just the devices in the EU region and most of the ads are related to Booking.com. The ads are not full-screen interactive ads, which are usually injected by adware apps, but they just replace the lock screen image with that of Booking.com. Huawei has given a statement to Digital Times denying that the ads are being served by Huawei.

The ads are not initiated by Huawei. We encourage individuals to check app settings, or follow publicly available directions on how to remove lock screen ads.

– Huawei

A Honor representative took Twitter to explain that Huawei is not pushing ads and the ads are shown by third-party apps. This could be true as many of Huawei’s devices come pre-installed with Booking.com app and the app could be pushing ads to the lock screen.

This is strange. Certainly none of the current HONOR devices are doing this in any markets.

— Bhavya Siddappa (@bhavis) June 13, 2019

The Reddit community (Via Neowin) has found a workaround to the problem. A temporary solution involves disabling the Magazine view or deleting the offending wallpapers from the Magazine gallery. Alternatively, you can also add a custom image from your Gallary as a lock screen wallpaper which should fix the issue.