OstrichSaK

A while back I installed this game on the advice of a buddy. What a fun game it ended up being. Then, some time after installing I had a random folder in my gallery with images from the movie Thor. After some digging I found it in a folder called millenniamedia and promptly deleted both of them. I didn't give it much thought because I thought maybe I accidentally downloaded it somehow while browsing although that doesn't seem like a mistake I would make. Then a short while later I notice not only is it back but I now have another folder with advertising crap from the TV show Sons of Guns. Now I know something is up and I narrowed it down to most likely being the app WwF since I don't have a lot of games installed nor to I play them very often but this was the latest one installed plus the most often I played a game. I deleted those only to find another one with Winnie the Pooh installed a while later. I wanted to get to the bottom of this because this IMO is some awfully shady marketing and if you want to have ads in the game (which it does) then fine, that's understandable to bring a free product to users. Even those can be overly obtrusive and make people to not want install/use their apps. To me there's a thin line and whoever has done this has crossed the line.

To get to the bottom of this I Googled millennialmedia and came across this website discussing how to install the advertising into applications. I then took the apk of WwF from my /data/app folder and copied it to my PC to be able to poke around in it. I renamed the .apk file to a .rar and unzipped it to examine the files. After doing so I did a search for the MMAdView.jar file mentioned in the MM website and wouldn't ya know it... there it was! It was a file found in \res\values called: attrs.xml and had the following text:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
- <resources>
- <declare-styleable name="MMAdView">
<attr name="apid" format="string" />

<attr name="acid" format="string" />

<attr name="adType" format="string" />

<attr name="refreshInterval" format="integer" />

<attr name="accelerate" format="string" />

<attr name="ignoreDensityScaling" format="string" />

<attr name="age" format="string" />

<attr name="gender" format="string" />

<attr name="zip" format="string" />

<attr name="income" format="string" />

<attr name="keywords" format="string" />

<attr name="ethnicity" format="string" />

<attr name="orientation" format="string" />

<attr name="marital" format="string" />

<attr name="children" format="string" />

<attr name="education" format="string" />

<attr name="politics" format="string" />

<attr name="goalId" format="string" />

</declare-styleable>


</resources>

Right near the top. So I think it's safe to say that Words with Friends is the culprit and Zynga has made my boycott list as a result. I encourage everyone to do the same and spread the word because this sort of pervasive marketing should NOT be accepted by the end users. Keep in mind that devs will do whatever WE allow them to get away with. I used to love Angry Birds by Rovio until they blindsided users with updates that included pop-up video w/loud audio that is not only intrusive but even caused some devices to crash losing game progress.

I pay for some apps and I don't pay for others. Not paying for an app doesn't mean that I want to relinquish all control of my device to an application developer and it's awfully arrogant of these unscrupulous developers to take it upon themselves to do so and I'm sure there are good devs out there that agree with me and feel this is something that gives a black eye to the entire dev community. If making money is the most important thing to you and you can't find a way to make some money with standard advertising then you need to find something else to do.

I feel awful that several people installed this game after my recommendation and now have all sorts of garbage in their gallery they didn't put there and I shouldn't have these kinds of feelings about suggesting a friggin Android video game app.

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MerpsMom

Words with Friends crashes my phone when I try it. So I deleted it from the phone but have it on my iPad.

Sneaky snots shouldn't be allowed.

Wish I knew even a small portion as much as some of the posters on here: what fun to poke around in a phone's innards.

MM

frodub

splendid work. thank you!

chrlswltrs

I'm doing the same thing, I rarely play on my phone anyways since I got my iPad. I just wish the android version of this app was as good as the iOS version

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Tye

I personally don't use WWF but I have to just say well done on getting to the bottom of this. Great work.

mplevy

Odd, I use WwF on my Iconia and have no unexpected images in the gallery.

OstrichSaK

Thanks to everyone for the supporting words as well as to those who clicked the little 'Thanks' button.

This is the puzzling part because you're not the only one who has said this. It appears as though MM has also figured out a way to randomize the files installed, the frequency they're updated and even the users who get them. How they do this I don't know but they why is exactly what we're discussing here. Makes it a LOT more difficult to track down an app when it's sporadic because some install this app and don't see any files or at least not right away because it's not like they install at the same time as the app. Pretty crafty and I can appreciate the ingenuity but when that ingenuity is to con the end user that's simply not cool and their actions should be made public for everyone to see.

Mostly Harmless

I will stick with WordFeud, but excellent work protection the consumer.

nyydynasty

I'm with ya on this one. I dont have problems like this and i've been running WWF since it was initially released.

Copenhagen69

+3 ... only been running it for a week or so, but I checked after reading this and my gallery of images is the 4 pictures I have taken since I got my phone ...

nyydynasty

i stand corrected. I didnt have any additional pictures in my gallery but I did have a "millennialmedia" folder on my sdcard.

alostpacket

Just FYI this is part of how Android works by defualt.

The MediaScanner built into android that maintains the "gallery" database, will scan the whole SDcard for images.

That's why they show up in your gallery.

However, developers are supposed to put an empty text file named .nomedia in the folder that they want the MediaScanner to skip.

You could put this file in the folder yourself too, just create it on a pc (make sure it's not named .nomedia.txt) and put it in the folder.

But really Zynga and that ad company are being IRRESPONSIBLE and LAZY (possibly even intentionally so) for not creating the .nomedia file. It only takes 5 lines of code to write it into an app.

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Last edited by alostpacket; July 20th, 2011 at 11:42 AM. Reason: typoz

mrsbelpit

^zynga can't even get notifications correct, I'm thinking 5 lines of code is way too much for them.


Wow, I used WWF for the first time on my tablet 2 days ago, and yesterday found a gallery image for some game or something (I don't really remember what it said)

Thanks for the tip.

OstrichSaK

I realize this is how Android/Linux works to scan all storage folders for images for display in the image Gallery. What ISN'T natural is the way Zynga is exploiting this using WwF to imbed advertisements that show up in the users gallery. This was no mistake or an oversight IMO.

alostpacket

Could be intentional, could be laziness - I don't know. Zynga is both (imho) ruthless and really lazy with their Android app

raynoldsk

I checked, and there it was.

If they spent half the effort to make the game actually work on Android as they did trying to be clever with their spam, the game might be decent.

As it is, the game is rarely accurate as to the latest moves in the game, the notifications are sporadic at best...but boy, can't they sneak ads in?

Deleting from my phone!

alostpacket

It seems it's also "misplacing" my games -- what's the other one people like? WordDroid? gonna try that.

OstrichSaK

Someone in post #9 mentioned WordFeud although I've never personally installed or played it. Just passing along the info.

Hightech

Just an FYI.....

The ORIGINAL Scrabble is now available in the market for cross platform play.....

OstrichSaK

That sounds promising. Thanks for the heads up!

mplevy

Scrabble was released July 11 with no honeycomb support? Thumbs down in my book. I'll have to keep an eye on it but not installing it at this point.

raynoldsk

If someone would develop an app that blocks those jokers I would gladly pay for it.

Desire D

Wordfeud is fantastic, and much easier on the eye in my opinion than Words with Friends, I've been playing it daily for over a year.

daveoneeighty

This.

Sadly all of my friends are Words with Friends drones and I'm forced to watch as WordFeud sits unused, with its sharper graphics, better scoring system, and better functionality.

Oh yeah, and it doesn't install Captain America, Honda Fit, or some crappy tequila pictures in my gallery.

chrlswltrs

Same here, I like wordfeud better also but everyone I know uses words with friends so to play against my friends I have to use that.

Mostly Harmless

Wordfeud is native to Android and that scores some points in my book. The app is easy on the eyes, very clean, and I have met a lot of good players on it (I have a few people that I keep playing with over and over with).

mplevy

I decided WTH and tried the Scrabble game on my phone. I just hope they get the tablet version working right. My Droid with root/Gingerbread and a 900 mHz OC and OV (over volt) is brought to its KNEES with this game. I can't even register it's so bad. I guess I can't place ALL the blame on this game but everything else seems to work just fine.

Again, they released this in June, how could have no love for Honeycomb 2-3 months after the release?

nyydynasty

i kinda like the official scrabble app because it links to facebook so your friends dont need the app on their phone to play with you

daveloft

I just put the .nomedia file in any folder I don't want in my gallery to show up, seems like less work to me.

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OstrichSaK

You're missing the point. We shouldn't have to do this for a game and folders we didn't want installed. If you throw a .nomedia in there it's just a folder taking up storage space and more so with each new advertisement that gets installed w/o you're knowing. I know of seven different advertisements now (and that number is only going to start growing exponentially unless we as users do something about it) each one has about 5-7 files inside of it. If you're worried about more/less work just don't install Words with Friends... problem solved.

Last edited by OstrichSaK; July 22nd, 2011 at 02:05 PM.

lexluthor

One other suggestion too. I use QuickPic. With that I can have it only scan folders I want. Instead of restricting folders using .nomedia, I can only include limited folders.

I'm sure other 3rd party gallery apps must do that too.

OstrichSaK

I, like a majority of Android users, don't want to use a 3rd party Gallery nor do I feel as though I should have to. I appreciate the suggestion but the real answer here is for Zynga to not be greedy and/or lazy. No other dev seems to have this issue so why does Zynga get a pass?

chrlswltrs

I just checked the Amazon Appstore and Words with Friends is not there. I wonder if the reason is because of the sketchy crap that Zynga is pulling with this app and Amazon's approval process as opposed to the open market...

bigbabys

YMMV, but I findthat Wordfeud is the most functional of the scrabble clones, but it is also the most simple. It has very few features. I just installed wordsmith today, it supports 2-4 players (instead of just 2) and has a live score preview as you play workds. Don't know about the notifications just yet. This is some shady nonsense Zynga is pulling and I'm glad I'm not on the wordfeud boat.

Also Scrabbed has some amazing features, but it's slow, filled with ads, and the notifications don't work.

alostpacket

So here's a question: has anyone see the ads in the gallery come up in the app? That might point towards laziness.

Or have you only seen them in the gallery? This would possibly imply an intentional motive.

alostpacket

I think I found out what's going on:

From: http://wiki.millennialmedia.com/index.php/Android

Veridict: Laziness

WWF has an old version of bad advertiser software.

Ikenna1

this has happened to me also

daveloft

Well I'm used to it as several apps I have used have forgot to put the .nomedia file in the folder. I don't see this as a conspiracy or their out to get you. It just shows their lack of understanding of Android. I usually send them an email asking them to put a .nomedia file in the folder and they often do it within a reasonable amount of time. I think your making a mountain out of a molehill.

alostpacket

For those who dont know how to create a .nomedia file, I posted a tutorial in our Android Media forum here:

[How to]: Create a .nomedia file in Windows to keep images/video/audio out of the gallery/music db


.

Copenhagen69

I spoke too soon. I was fine for about 3 weeks then my gallery got spammed with winnie the pooh and some car ads. I deleted the app and went to the free version of scrabble lol