Hopefully everybody was able to use the exploit to disable this but the real reason for this post is to thank @TROYPOINT for not doing all of the cringe “shocked face” etc. drama thumbnails. Seeing one of those makes me skip the video. Troy is like watching old school Dragnet, just the facts. 
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The one thing that caught our attention was Elias from AFTVNews confirming this through a source at Amazon. His word lends a lot of credibility to all of this.
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More info following Sun article
Try being in the UK, we are very limited to what boxes we can get. It’s either Fire devices, Nvidia shield or some dodgy Chinese box filled with malware. I’m lucky I have a shield but many other will feel the full effect of the Fire ban.
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looks like I am kn the market for another device. would go for the One (branded differently in the) but we do not have pro version.
So very possible Stremio, Kodi, Tivimate and Smarters may be removed from Fire Sticks that don’t have the hack applied? Google search said they will also do this on Google Tv in September 2026. Since all those apps I previously mentioned are developer registered and have verified their identity with Google they probably won’t be removed from play store? Time will tell.
Well, we don’t really know what it means. Look at some of the other posts on this.
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Any others besides Formuler and Ugoos?
You can get sub par androids at Temu,Ali express . Their could be more premium AOSP boxes, I don’t know of any. My favs Ugoos and Formuler run good. My formuler 10’s of which I have 4 are years old and still working great. Do ebay used , try one out.Just know temu boxes are $40 component boxes.Atmos no, do they work yes. Will they last a year maybe. That being said their are tons of them, of which I have no idea about. There possibly could be good ones.You have to realize Walmart Onn boxes,Amazon firesticks , Google TV, Roku are $200 components . Sold to consumer at a loss to entice you to pay for their product.
I’m using an ONN Pro 4K for now. Before this I was using generic T95Z Plus boxes. They worked great fairly inexpensive too. Look on Amazon there are plenty. The huge advantage of buying on Amazon vs Temu is shipping speed and if you buy on Amazon and don’t like you can walk into any Whole Foods and return for a refund.
Do the T95 boxes,.or any of those cheap boxes have malware built in? Seems like there are no budget non Google boxes like the onn. It is only ugoos and formuler that are expensive.
You will not know - some of our Troypoint family have used these boxes with “NO” issues.
What risk is this malware? Could steel your email / passwords, network passwords, send user data back to China or simple run bots on your device
General advice is to avoid them - Troy made a post on cheap China streaming boxes
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LOL IMO the Malware issue you read about on this forum and many others? I need proof. I had 2 T95Z Plus boxes for about 8-10 years. Never any issue. So for me I see these articles about Malware on these boxes but I never actually see any real use cases of anyone who was actually compromised from Malware on these cheap China boxes.
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Not all cheap boxes have malware and for now I say why bother because we have the great Onn Android Boxes.
Here’s an article explaining how one of these boxes is loaded with malware and comes from a credible source. The problem is that it’s hard for scanners to pick on this deeply embedded stuff.
I’m always skeptical seeing cheap boxes like these and figure the manufacturer is probably doing something in the background to make it worth their time. Not all of the time but some definitely have malware built in.
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i may be wrong but is the thompson box the same as onn speaking from uk
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Thx @Miki
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What is the hack people keep talking about to prevent the deletion of apps? Does this actually work or should one look for different hardware options?
Yes and you still have to side load BBC iplayer app
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