Gigaset smartphones appear to have an ad-injecting app

Users of Gigaset smartphones are shown ad pop-ups and notice that there is an app called com.gennie.clean on their device. The app will reinstall itself if uninstalled. The manufacturer says it is working on a solution.

Several users of Gigaset smartphones report on the Androidpit forum that com.gennie.clean has been active on their device for a few days. Deleting the app would do nothing as it will reinstall itself. According to users, the app is not recognized as malware by anti-virus software.

The app seems to use a sandbox to bypass virus scanners. A user reports that Norton Mobile Security does mark a system application named Update as malware. It cannot be removed, but can be stopped with Force Quit. If that process is not running, com.gennie.clean will not be reinstalled according to the user. It therefore seems that the app that injects advertisements ends up on the devices via an update process from the manufacturer.

Users have contacted Gigaset and the manufacturer says in comments that it is aware of the problems with the com.gennie.clean app. An employee promises that they are working hard to solve the problem, but no concrete action seems to have been taken yet.

The German forum topic contains reports from users of the Gigaset GS370, GS270 and their Plus versions. It is not clear whether the problem occurs on all Gigaset smartphones. The Android smartphones are also sold in the Benelux.