O2 Hijacked Samsung Internet homepage need help

[louiscar]

O2 my provider appears to have hijacked Samsung Internet default page to go to O2. 

My phone is NOT locked to them, i recently moved to O2 , installed their app and find that there is no setting to remove or change the default homepage.

Note: I know i can use custom setting but default is always shown as O2.

 Despite uninstalling O2 app and Samsung Internet I cannot find out where this is set. It must be done in the system. Annoying!

When reinstalling Samsung internet the default is back to O2. Can you tell me how they have done this and how to change it? I'm on Android 12 with note 10 plus 

[Neo001]

Check if you can change it in Samsung Internet > Settings > Homepage

 

[louiscar]

Thanks for the reply .
I took the sim out and the uninstalled /reinstalled Samsung Internet.

That removed the o2 link, and curiously the actual option "default " was no longer there. The choices were now "quick access" or "custom".

I changed default browser to Firefox and reinstalled O2 app and found tge default setting was back in SI, Firefox untouched.

So there must be some internal system setting that allows a Network Op to set a default oage which is not avaliable to us, the user and owners of our devices.

Irritating!

[Neo001]

Interesting! This shouldnt be allowed though ( it's a covert way of advertising).

[louiscar]

I agree . We should have control

[keith30]

I'm with o2 with my S22ultra but I can have either o2 or Google as my default browser.

[louiscar]

Ok maybe this has changed on S22 internally. Are you on Android 12?

[keith30]

Yeah I'm still on Android 12 till the Android 13 comes available which I believe should later this month or early Nov, my last phone S8+ was the same with o2 but now when I moved upto the S22 I could choose the default or the o2 browser when setting it up, I found o2 was better than the Google one and I use the Samsung Internet browser app as Chrome has too many bugs in it so you have to be careful incase of malware being installed though it.

[Paulf1]

All the networks do it only way to completely avoid it is to get the phone straight from samsung..

[louiscar]

Ok so it's a sysyem hook probably made available to providers via an API maybe unless there's a hidden setting.
Noticeable was the "default " is missing normally, it's either quick, custom, or current page, till something sets a default. Given that this doesnt change if SI is uninstalled it has to be a autem setting somewhere