Seeing ads in my notification bar?

[whitenoiz]

Hey all.

Recently (like a week ago or so) I started seeing ads in my notification bar... it has an icon which is a white star with a red dot in the middle. The last one I got said "College degrees available" and when I clicked it... it brought me to gameloft.com (first time seeing this site)

Any ideas? It's not that much of a nuisance, but I'm just afraid of spyware and such.

I didn't install any new apps (at least I don't think), but did update my apps.

Thanks.

 

[sdrawkcab25]

Was probably an update to one of your apps then. Would have to uninstall them one by one.

 

[Rdjr74]

I better not start seeing that crap! NO WAY!

 

[RMarkwald]

Maybe something similar to this? Did you install any apps recently?

 

[Kidplunge]

Having the same issue White Star with Red dot. junk mail style advertisements. Any ideas?

What apps do you have? we could have the same app

 

[SduncDVM]

I had this problem as well, soon after I ran a mass of updates. None of the forums were very helpful, so I had to figure it out myself... so here it goes:

Next time the star appears, click the ad and see which app name appears in the upper left-hand corner (as it takes you to the Market to view the app it's advertising).

For me, the app was Easy Filter. I deleted it and read the other reviews, and the other users were equally peeved. I think the ad service is AirPush or something... some of the free apps are using it now to generate income, I'm sure.

I hope you find this useful. I'm so glad to be done with those darn ads!

 

[Proshooter]

I have a Verizon HTC Incredible. I add apps, delete apps. To my surprise I see a new notification (in the notification bar) that says "Your Phone Is Too Slow! Tap Here to Speed Up Your Phone". The icon is a red star with a white and black border.

This looks very suspicious and a quick Google search revealed nothing. Has anybody else seen this? Is it a by product of one of my apps. Maybe you know which one? Please let me know, because I click nothing that says too without my understanding of what it is.

Thanks.

 

[sdrawkcab25]

Definitely from an app, it's a new way for apps to display ads. I believe if you click on the ad it tells you what app it is from in one of the corners.

 

[elincreible]

This was very helpful thank you..
My app was BatteryLife uninstalled it and problem solved.
thanks

I had this problem as well, soon after I ran a mass of updates. None of the forums were very helpful, so I had to figure it out myself... so here it goes:

Next time the star appears, click the ad and see which app name appears in the upper left-hand corner (as it takes you to the Market to view the app it's advertising).

For me, the app was Easy Filter. I deleted it and read the other reviews, and the other users were equally peeved. I think the ad service is AirPush or something... some of the free apps are using it now to generate income, I'm sure.

I hope you find this useful. I'm so glad to be done with those darn ads!

 

[blomster]

I started having the same problem yesterday. I called Verizon tech support, and they confirmed the white star/red dot notification wasn't from them. When I tapped on the notification in the drop down list, the top of my screen briefly said USA Traffic Cameras before taking me to some other app in the app store. I uninstalled USA Traffic Cameras. I hope that takes care of it!

 

[travlerv]

Holy crap! I been having the same issue too. I dont want that crap coming to my phone. I'll try a couple of the suggestions I read. I think mine came from droidmail. They have advertising on it & you have to agree for it to install. I noticed at the privacy section that they can distribute your info to others. WEll, they did. I started getting a bunch of unsolicited junk on my phone.

 

[travlerv]

I had this problem as well, soon after I ran a mass of updates. None of the forums were very helpful, so I had to figure it out myself... so here it goes:

Next time the star appears, click the ad and see which app name appears in the upper left-hand corner (as it takes you to the Market to view the app it's advertising).

For me, the app was Easy Filter. I deleted it and read the other reviews, and the other users were equally peeved. I think the ad service is AirPush or something... some of the free apps are using it now to generate income, I'm sure.

I hope you find this useful. I'm so glad to be done with those darn ads!

I get this crap on my phone. After following your suggestion, I still do not see any thing that tells me what app this might me associated with. Any other ideas?

 

[drdoom]

Sorry that I can't help you guys, but when you do figure out which app is causing it, mark it as malicious when you uninstall and give it one star. Also, post the name of it here so everyone else can avoid it. Thanks.

 

[sdrawkcab25]

I get this crap on my phone. After following your suggestion, I still do not see any thing that tells me what app this might me associated with. Any other ideas?

you will have to uninstall every app one by one that you installed since you started seeing them.

 

[travlerv]

Actually I did. I installed three apps. They were all email clients. Only one had adds on the bottom. Maildroid. I contacted them about it but they just denied they had anything to do with it. Since these all come from the google market, I like to make Google responsible for it. Meanwhile, every add that shows up on my phone, I will go to that place & post a bad review about it so the world knows where some of this crap is coming from. I hope others do the same!

 

[frostkat]

I've started getting these as well. For a couple weeks now. One was telling me my phone was too slow, a couple telling me my battery was low (phone was fully charged!) and the latest was to meet singles in my area. I've gone to the last two and marked the apps as spam in the market. None of these are things I've got installed on my phone. The only apps I can think of that might be linked to this are TapFish and Words with Friends. I'm deleting apps I don't use and going to try and keep an eye on the notifications to see if I can figure out what is causing it for sure. If I find anything I'll update.
Also one-starring the apps that show up won't work since it looks like the only way to do that is by actually installing the app.

*update: I found AirPush Detector for free on the market. It's by Dan Bjorge. He's not connected to Airpush and it found an app that's using it--not the ones I mentioned above. If anyone has Blogger-Droid that's one culprit!

 

[sdrawkcab25]

+1 to "airpush detector" in the market. It will tell you what apps are putting ads in the notification bar.

 

[Lizowski]

Look out for this - I had a similar ad show up in my notification bar a few weeks ago and when I clicked it to make it go away, it actually appeared to have put a trojan of some sort on my phone that started deleting all of my apps. The only way I could make it stop was to do a factory reset. I was freaking out because I was basically watching things disappear and all I could think about was how I use my phone as an alarm clock. Beware what you click!

 

[iowabowtech]

Maybe run lookout or similar and see if it turns anything up.

 

[chrlswltrs]

You can now keep the apps you want and not the notification spam. Here is the app from airpush that will remove all the spam and still let you use the apps:

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.airpush.optout&feature=search_result

 

[alex17]

For me, the culprit was SpeedBoost, really disappointing for an app that is supposed to *improve* system performance. But: no dot-stars since uninstalling, so far.

 

[joedraper]

my dad used airpush detector,
he came up with the name "com.willemstoker.(app name)" in all of his.
the apps were:
lock pattern
gtalk updater
autopilot

i'll check mine here in a minute

 

[TweetPenis]

I found this app embedded in the "pocket girlfriend" app. Uninstall and delete the apk.

 

[andreezy]

Look into the airpush detector app. it detects which app you have installed that pushes the ad to your notification bar. Slimy bastardos!

 

[LJimador]

fyi...Linux News by openview mobile uses airpush ads. As recommended here downloaded AirPush Detector by Dan Bjorge to detect the app then uninstalled marking it malicious, rating it 1, and leaving a review warning others of airpush notifications.

Did not use Airpush App for Permanent Opt-out because I did not trust using the app since it was published by Airpush. Has anyone experienced problems using this method ?

again thanks to all