Why it matters: As soon as Huawei's default wallpapers began switching to advertisements for Booking.com last week, the mobile manufacturer played a quick game of who's to blame. Huawei claimed it wasn't them, Honor backed them up and blamed the Booking.com app, but it wasn't on every device. While we still don't know the exact cause of the issue, Huawei has confirmed it did come from their servers, but thankfully, it won't be distributed to any more devices.
According to a statement via Techradar, someone slipped the images into Huawei's rotating wallpaper servers, which began to send them out. Wallpapers should automatically be changed to something other than an ad soon, but to remove the ads from the device they'll need to be deleted manually.
"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 bring you an excellent user experience."
While the problem seems to be over, the impact could be felt for a while. There are three ways to view what happened: Huawei knew about the advertisements and used them as a cash grab, Huawei's servers are woefully insecure, or Huawei employees with access to the servers can't be trusted. None of them look particularly good, and Huawei had better do something to regain users' trust or their customers will evaporate.
Image Credit: Tinh Khuong on Unsplash