Skip to main content
To Customer Support To Customer Support
Good afternoon,

 

I just installed Webroot on my Kindle Fire HD 8.9.  As part of the set up I wanted to set up the password and set WR as a device administrator.  The webroot set up keeps telling me the device administrator is in an unsafe status.  When I click on the fix button it takes me back to set up screen and I end up going into the loop seeing the same thing.

 

When I go to the kindles settings page it will not let me select Webroot as an administrator, it shows up under the administrator section but is not selected.

 

Any idea how to fix this so I can lock down the system with a password?

 

Thanks
Hello seancarty and Welcome to the Webroot Community Forums.

 

I don't have much knowledge about the Android App but MikeR should be online tomorrow around 1:00PM EST to help you or some other member with more knowledge than me may reply.

 

TH
Thank you very much, hopefully we can get this figured out.

 

 
Please try an uninstall and reinstall of the SecureAnywhere app on your Kindle Fire HD. You should be prompted to grant SecureAnywhere Device Administrator access upon reinstallation.

 

Amazon may be restricting third party apps from gaining Device Administrator access in their most recent versions. I will also update this thread after I touch base with our mobile engineers to explain the device administrative functionality on the Kindle Fire vs. the Android OS.
Device admin appears to have just recently been locked down and is no longer permitted for third party applications on the Kindle Fire HD devices according to their developers. As a third party developer, that affects us. I'm going to meet later this week with our mobile department and see what the plan will be going forward on this device. Unfortunately, if our app requires a permission that is no longer available, we will probably need to either figure out how to work around that or not offer those features on that device anymore. We'll update this thread again as we determine how we're going to move forward.
Although you may be unable to enable device admin, there are fallback routines already in place for if device admin is not enabled. We are still working to determine exactly how to best deal with this new device limitation, but you can rest assured that fallback methods are in place for lost device protection features.
Any update on this issue as i have this installed on my kindle fire hd?
I called Amazon about this issue and they will not allow third party admin rights, which prevents use of all of WR's capabilities.  I told them this is not good and they need to recitify this to allow full functionality, like remote wipe, location etc.

 

Not sure Amazon will do anything though.
Administrative access is still being locked down and we will provide an update when one is available. Thanks for investigating further, seancarty
even if amazon would allow administrative rights, remote lock,wipe or any remote commands i believe will not work.theres no gps in the kindle for software like wsa to use?and i believe they all use gps for this?
My kindle fire HD 8.9 has gps.
Non-telephonic devices can still receive Lost Device Protection commands, however, it is not through our primary delivery method, which requiries telephonic features. Instead, we do it through a polling feature where the device receives the command the next time that it checks in online (usually within 30 minutes).

 

The device does not use a built in GPS (unless it is the Kindle Fire HD 8.9'' 4G LTE Wireless) and uses wifi triangulation or cell tower network location (for devices with cellular/telephonic support), which are much less accurate.
yes the 8.9 4g does have gps(i have kfhd 7 which doesnt,sucks)

thanks MikeR for the explanation
Locate will also function using geolocation via wifi, so that will still work. Wipe will still function, but it will not wipe as much as it could with device admin enabled. Back when Android 2.1 was the best thing available, device admin was not an option, but wipe still worked. Lock should still function as far as I'm aware (please report back if you test and this is not the case). Password protection on uninstall was a device-admin-specific function and will not work. So as I mentioned, most features have fallback routines, but it is definitely not optimal that device admin has been locked down by Amazon on this device.
Scream function works, location did not and wipe function is grayed out. 

This is on a kindle fire HD 8.9
That's unfortunate. 😞 We'll look at seeing what we can do on this end, but without device admin access, a lot of the permissions we once had are now revoked, which does limit the functionality of the app in some respects. You're right to contact Amazon. The only way all functionality would ultimately be restored is if they reversed course and re-granted the access they blocked.
would rooting the kindle fire hd help with the device admin problem?i dont know as i have not rooted the device do to warranty.
Rooting the device could potentially allow you to unlock the device admin functions since you would have administrative rights that could be granted to applications on an as-needed basis.  However, doing so is a "Do it at your own risk" action.  Having device admin disabled is bad on one side of the spectrum, but rooting the device opens you up to even worse problems all the way on the other side of the spectrum because you have so much control, it's possible to really make a mess of your device by denying permissions to things that need them or negatively changing important things on the device.  While it's certainly possible to root your device and not cause problems on it, we have no way of knowing what kind of changes have been made to a device once its been rooted.  As such, we cannot support rooted devices.  Sadly, Amazon's decision to revoke device admin privileges has left many users such as yourself in a catch-22 position regarding how to deal with the problem. 

 

In short, yes, you can try rooting the device as a workaround, but we unfortunately cannot assist you in that or provide support for WSA-Mobile on a rooted device.
i was just curious,i have no plans on rooting my device.it works fine the way it is.when i contacted amazon about this issue a couple of months ago the support person i talked to had no idea of what could be the problem and told me to return the kindle fire hd back to best buy for a new one(i didnt).im glad i seen this post and now know the problem.
Amazon just released a software update and now I can set Webroot as an administrator.  So now this gives us all the functionality that I was having issues with.
That is great to hear, thank you very much for the update!
That's fantastic, seancarty. Thanks for the update!  😃
thanks for the heads up,very good that this option was fixed
Hello Brihy1,

Lost device protection commands should still work.  As Kindle Fire HD does not have SMS capabilities they need to be sent via the console.

So long as the device is connected to wifi, it should receive and process the command.

Please let us know if you have any further questions/thoughts.

Sincerely,

David S.
I have purchased a Kindle Fire can I get some assistance with installing webroot onto my tablet?

 

Thank you.
If you have not yet used the App Store, you may be asked to enter your credit card information to allow "One-Touch Purchasing." You will not be charged for the Webroot Mobile app.

 


  1. Turn on your Kindle Fire®️.
     
  2. From the Home screen, tap Apps, then tap Store. 

    The App Store opens.
     
  3. Tap the search box. Enter "Webroot" and tap Search.
     
  4. Locate the search result "Webroot SecureAnywhere Mobile". This is a free app.
     
  5. Download the app. Once installed, it will be placed in your Apps library.
     
  6. To launch an application, tap the Webroot icon in the Apps library, Carousel, or Favorites.

    You can now use the Webroot app. Tap the display to hide it when you’re done.

Reply


Terms & Conditions