# Lenovo Vibe P1M problem



## Natsuke (Apr 15, 2011)

Hi all.

My wife has a serious problem with her brand new Lenovo Vibe smartphone.

Smartphone was bought in legitimate store which has exclusively Lenovo products 10 days ago. 2 or 3 days ago, some apps and adds started to appear on home screen, but they can't be found in app drawer or app list in settings, so I can't uninstall them. Even after I delete it from homescreen (probably just a shortcut) apps are boing auto installed randomly. There is no guarantee when it starts with pop-up adds or installing, sometimes when answering calls, then opening camera app, or trying to send text message etc.

I'm usualy good at setting phones up but this is beyond me.
All phones that my wife or I own were set up by me. All apps she uses I also use on my phone, but never ever in last 5-6 years of using android smartphones we had any of this. She never installs apps without my knowledge (she just doesnt care about it), and uses few basic apps.

So, info on smartphone is this: it has stock android 5.1.1 OS, its not rooted or tinkered with, apps installed beside those that came with phone are nova launcher, poweramp music player, zedge, usual google apps, firefox, chrome, alarm clock free from AVG, colornote, netflix, viber, whatsapp, es file explorer, calcu (calculator), dropbox, exdialer, bs player.

All those apps both she and I used for years, on different phones and had no problems. She had used Samsung S3 int version till we bought this Lenovo Vibe 10 days ago.

I turned auto updates off from google play store immediately after setting phone up, option for installing unverified apps is unchecked.

Please help me with this, warranty is valid for 2 years so I have time, but I'm not sure this falls under warranty.

Thanks in advance, Natsuke


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Get an antivirus and check the phone with it.


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## Natsuke (Apr 15, 2011)

Ok, I downloaded Comodo security (saw it few days ago on one topic here being recommended by your collegue) and scanned it, it said only app named 2048 (a puzzle game) was trojan, but I'm not sure its only problem.

Gonna give phone a try this weekend and see if it comes back again.


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

You might just have found the problem as trojans can bring a lot of stuff down, once you have got rid of it you should see a difference.


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## Natsuke (Apr 15, 2011)

Hi.
Since yesterday I scanned it few times, once with commodo, then avast, and malwarebytes, but only commodo found one suspect which I deleted (2048 app though I doubt its malicious) and phone is still randomly acting up with self downloads, popup adds etc.

I've read somewhere that lenovo among some other companies preinstall some malware-like software called superfish. I don't know if it's the case here, but it's definitely not something I want on phone.

I'm probably gonna return it to store and ask for either cleaning that or refund, or another phone.

I doubt my wife or I infected it with those few apps we downloaded and used in those 10 days, especially when they never had any problems before.

edit: I found via es file manager 2 or 3 generated folders like "appdownload" and one random name, which had several downloaded apk's that were ready to install but were blocked by me setting "block non market apps" to off.

edit2: malwarebyte actually found 1 apk named something.hidden.something.apk which was uninstalled by malwarebytes. Will see how it behaves now.


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Well done on the detective work, you seem to be getting there.


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## Natsuke (Apr 15, 2011)

Update.

2 days it has been working normally, and now all of a sudden, it all started again. Malwarebytes (and avast also) found 3 malicious items which have been removed, but I really doubt it's gonna stay fixed.

I think this phone may have come with pre-installed malware - rootkit or trojan or something else which is dormant for some time before starting installs.

I'm gonna send it to vendor to fix it or swap for another phone. Which I'm now dreading as I suspect any of them might behave same.


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Did you try a factory reset as if that works then it was something added by the user, or if it still does it then it strengthens your case for it being preloaded on the system.


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