Various types of ads are constantly coming to our Android smartphones, but pop-up ads are especially striking to everyone. They pop up in various shapes and sizes (some even take up the entire screen) and are often inconvenient precisely because they can be clicked on by mistake and potentially open an unwanted or dangerous link.
Pop-up ads are extremely common, but there’s a way to detect and remove them. Read detailed information about it below.
Ads on Android Back in the Day
There was a time when ads on Android were something completely new. Everyone probably remembers ads that used to appear only in the notification area, but this immediately pointed to future trends where promotional offers and advertisements will begin to appear all over the phone screen.
At the same time, notification area ads allowed users to identify the app responsible for their appearance. The process was very simple because the icon of the mentioned application appeared next to the displayed ad. Fortunately, today it’s possible to determine the same for pop-up ads.
How to Stop Pop-up Ads on Android?
You’ll have to solve the issue of pop-up ads if your smartphone continuously displays a large number of them within applications or on the home screen. The fact that you once played a few rounds of Texas Hold’em in an online game set up by a casino app at TopCasinoExpert.com, doesn’t mean that you want its promo ad to interrupt your time on a phone every day.
The first thing you need to do is close all active applications. On the phone, you simply have to get to the display of all open application tabs and click on the sign that closes them all. Rebooting the phone is also recommended as it terminates unwanted processes. In case these simple procedures didn’t immediately lead to results, check the applications you have recently downloaded.
It’s useful to do an initial check inside the Google Play Store, where you should pay attention to the reviews for each new application you use. In case you’ve noticed in the reviews that other users also report problems with ads, don’t use the application and rather delete it. Unfortunately, determining which app is causing the pop-up ads to appear is often not that simple, so you’ll need to do some additional checks.
How to Determine Which App Is Causing Pop-up Ads on Your Phone?
On our smartphones, we most often use applications that are reliable and already pre-installed, but occasionally we’re prone to installing some others that we need at that very moment. As a rule, such applications are more likely to show ads and the best example of this is free Android games that we have a habit of downloading.
With similar applications, it’s not a problem if ads exist within their interface, but the problem arises when such ads appear as pop-ups on your screen or within other applications. In that case, it’s actually adware (a type of malware) and can be defined as software that’s designed to automatically generate ads, regardless of the user’s consent or knowledge.
Google strongly fights against this type of unwanted ads and within the Google Play Store, it expressly prohibits apps that send unwanted messages and ads to users. Unfortunately, this fight isn’t always successful, so users may end up downloading an application that contains adware.
If you want to determine which application is responsible for the pop-up ads, you have two options:
Checking Pop-up Ad Notifications
Newer versions of Android have made it easier to discover information about what’s active on your device and what permissions apps are using. When you notice an app notification that you didn’t realize was active, click on it and hold your finger for a few seconds so that you can click on the “More” button below. This button may have different names on different types of smartphones, but its function is the same and it will take you inside the menu that edits application permissions.
Once you’re inside the interface that manages app permissions, check what settings the app in question has and what hardware and features it has access to on your phone. Additional settings can be found as follows: Settings>Apps and notifications>Permissions. These steps may also vary from phone to phone, but the key is to place yourself within the app permissions interface in “Settings”.
In this place, you’ll find additional details about the applications and potentially determine that the functioning of some of them doesn’t take place exactly as it was set at the beginning.
Checking Apps That Are Currently Open
Open applications should be checked in the same way as notifications and determine which are showing pop-up ads. When a pop-up ad appears on your screen, swipe up from the bottom of the screen with your finger to reveal tabs with open applications (the so-called “Overview”). On some phones, the same thing is done when you click on the “Recent apps” option at the bottom of the screen.
This is a very useful technique because the pop-up ad that appeared opens some of the applications in the background, and this is how you will determine which are active at that moment. Check if there’s any unknown among them. If you find it, be sure to delete it. Otherwise, check the applications that are open, and pay special attention to their permissions.
The described steps in both procedures may differ from device to device, but it’s necessary to say that applications can actually send notifications (and with it pop-up ads) without being visible among the active tabs in the “Overview” feature. If you haven’t been able to find which app is the cause, all isn’t lost. There are very useful tools for removing pop-up ads.
The Application Causing the Pop-up Ads Can’t Be Found
The only option left before you take the last resort and factory reset your phone is to use an anti-adware tool. The best application for this purpose is Popup Ad Detector & Blocker. It’s a free app that will detect which apps on your phone are causing and sending pop-up ads.
Popup Ad Detector & Blocker can detect different types of pop-up ads, including lock screen ads, home screen ads, notification bar ads, and apps that display pop-up ads over other apps. It will do this in a way that it will mark the application that’s responsible for the pop-up ads and you’ll just have to delete it in the end.
If you don’t normally use an application that provides complete protection for your phone, we recommend that you definitely do so because in this way you also affect the control of pop-up ads within the Android system. Our recommendations are ESET Mobile Security Antivirus and Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.
Online Ad Detection Apps
We can also add that they should consider using the so-called “ad network detector” i.e. apps that detect connections between your phone and online ads that they subsequently block.
There are several options to try here, but we can definitely recommend AppBrain Ad Detector, Lookout Mobile Security, and Addons Detector.
