Pop-up (virus?) on android phone

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moonjiver
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Pop-up (virus?) on android phone

Postby moonjiver » Sun Aug 28, 2016 1:18 am

A pop-up has managed to get onto my Samsung, appears often when I'm going into bookmarked websites!

I'm not sure if anyone would have any ideas - I did a factory re-set, also downloaded a couple of cleaning apps (which didn't work), also changed some settings and tried blocking pop-ups.

The thing (referred to as spam or a virus on the internet) comes from https://s3.amazonaws.com which appears to be an advertising platform. Message (which fills the screen) reads: "Congratulations Three user .. you have been chose for a chance to get a new iPhone 6s ..." etc. How do they know I'm on Three?!

It's unusual to get this on a mobile. Any thoughts please?

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moonjiver
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Re: Pop-up (virus?) on android phone

Postby moonjiver » Sun Aug 28, 2016 1:53 am

Done some more research and amazonaws.com seems to be their cloud storage platform, used by third-parties for sending out advertising etc. - and in some cases spam and malware. The general view is that Amazon's vetting and control of what goes out is poor and this problem has been recurring for some years.

Hope the above makes sense! The first serious problem I've had on a smartphone, but I gather that there is actually an email address for reporting abuse, so I'm going to try that route.

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Richard
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Re: Pop-up (virus?) on android phone

Postby Richard » Sun Aug 28, 2016 9:19 am

I use 'ad Blocker' on my PC - it looks like there is an equaivalent for the mobile:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248296/h ... e_ads.html

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Richard
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Re: Pop-up (virus?) on android phone

Postby Richard » Sun Aug 28, 2016 9:23 am

that was a bit dated (2012) - perhaps these are better?

http://techarena.org/best-android-ad-blocker

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moonjiver
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Re: Pop-up (virus?) on android phone

Postby moonjiver » Sun Aug 28, 2016 1:51 pm

Richard, thanks a lot. Both those articles were very useful (I've copied/pasted them) and I have actually downloaded TrustGo Ad Detector - it pinpointed four apps which had advertising plug-ins. One was a crossword-solver which I had suspected anyway! Done some uninstalling, changing settings to block things etc.

I had no idea this had all become such an issue on mobiles, as well as PCs. If I get further problems, I'll consider downloading the Firefox browser and their adblocking extension.

The only other problem I've ever had on a mobile was a "virus" - not quite the same as on a PC. But the phone had to be sent off and wiped and needed new SD and SIM cards.

Thanks again.


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