I’m pissed. Not sure why an ad showed yup in my notification bar asking “see if someone is spying on you” or something like that.
I noticed the link was for an affiliate marketing company called Deadbolt. I haven’t found an easy way to see which app is using them.
There is another company called airpush and there is an app to detect airpush in your apps. I didn’t have any airpush apps at least.
Once I find out who used this sleezy form of advertising in their app, someone will be getting some negative feedback!
If I find a detector app or method to find out, I’ll be sure to post it here!
Any luck with this? I too just received this….
I haven’t found a solution yet, but plenty of people coming here searching. While the Airpush Detector app may help for some types of ads in your notification bar, it didn’t work for me. I haven’t gotten another ad, but when I do I’m going to hold down my home button. This will bring up the 8 most recently run apps. One of those apps is likely the culprit. If anyone else does that and finds the culprit, please share what you find here!
I literally just got one of these, touchingthe notification brought up my browser selection screen. I selected a third party one but no page loaded. Just say on the browser homepage. Wonder if it could be a type of installer or jusr backdoor ads? Still looking around for answers. But def not cool.
I just got a second ad tonight. I tried holding the home button and unfortunately, no apps showed up that would be candidates for this sort of back door (recent apps were Google Maps, Opera Mini, Pandora, Schedule, Caller, etc.)
It looks like I should expect one ad each night until I figure out which app is the culprit. While I don’t think it is the chess.com app, I removed that one first. Now I get an error message every time I try to view my apps in the marketplace. Looking online, the only solution for that problem is to do a factory reset. Yuck. PITA.
I was able to get my Market problem fixed, but I still can’t find an easy way to detect which apps are using these push notification ads run be Leadbolt. It turns out the name got autocorrected in the main message. If you do a google search for Leadbolt android ads, you’ll see a lot of developers talking about how great these ads are for making money. Once people realize where the ads are coming from, though, I know people will uninstall the apps.
I got the same thing last night for the first time! I did just download a few new apps and I think I might delete all of them. If anyone figures it out, let us know!
I got this same thing last night, and it proceeded to open up Latitude without any prompting from me! Since this showed my location, and the location of all of my family members, I must say it freaked me out a little. I’m considering a factory reset since I don’t have an overloaded phone. Will wait to see if anyone posts any findings first.
Perhaps a quick comparison of the last several apps we each installed would help identify a culprit?
Since I deleted the chess.com app I haven’t had any more notification ads. I’ll have to wait a while longer to see if that was the one. If you want to post a list of your installed apps I can say which ones I also have. I’d have to look through mine, but off the top of my head I have pandora, words with friends, superuser, led flashlight, and some games like dragon fly, flying penguin, fruit slice, blast monkeys, labyrinth lite, and then some google apps which I’m sure are fine.
Unfortunately, I just got another notification – just a few minutes after I added the last comment. This won said something like “You have won $50” or “Claim $50”. Let me know if you have any of the above apps (other than pandora and words with friends which I’m pretty sure are okay). Other apps I have are Abduction!, Battery Widget, Bookmarks to SD, Myfitnesspal, Gasbuddy, GPS Status and Toolbox, Kids Doodle, Move! Bike computer, PaintJoy, Skyfire, Solitaire, Soundhound, Speedtest, net, Toddler Lock, TrafficJam Free, Tweetdeck, Twitter, Video to Facebook, Wireless Tether, and Zillow. Let me know if you have any of those. Getting notifications once every 2-3 days is going to make this tough, but I’m going to just start removing apps I don’t use – one at a time.
I just got one of these as well. I haven’t downloaded any new apps recently. Not sure where it came from.
I have a rooted evo, Task killer shows these as currently running:
Advanced Task Killer
Internet
Lookout
News*
Sportacular*
Wordsearch*
Superuser Permissions
Maps*
AdFree
Voicemail
Sprint Navigation*
Nova*
Twitter
AK Notepad*
The apps marked with an * are ones that I do not recall opening.
Just got one of these also. the following apps were currently running
backup assist
Mr number
Facebook
opera
mixzing
g+ messenger
junos pulse
im
my Verizon
hanging with friends
words with friends
common installed apps to yours:
traffic jam free (just installed)
sound hound
words with friends
chess.com
others recently installed
mixzing
stop watch and timer
have many more if you want a more thorough comparison
Here is a related post that might help.
http://www.androidpit.com/en/android/forum/thread/426485/getting-a-star-in-notification-bar
I read in another forum to try going to:
Market > Menu > Settings > Disable AdMob Ads — Not sure if that will do anything, but I haven’t received any since I made the changes. Time will tell.
I finally found a solution! First, disabling AdMob ads will not affect these particular ads, as they are not provided by AdMob. They are being served by Leadbolt. The Airpush Detector does not detect them either. The only app that I’ve found that detects it thus far is one called “Addons Detector” by Denper. This app will show you all of the different advertising agencies used by each app. The one to look out for is Leadbolt as they provide the push notifications I’ve experienced. It turns out the offending app was Traffic Jam Free and the developer has already removed the notification ads.
I just got one of these ads for the first time. But I don’t have traffic jam. My most recently downloaded app was kik messenger. I don’t have chess.com either.
Boolie,
Download the “addons manager” app. After running it, you should find one of your apps with leadbolt or airpush listed next to it. That is the offending app. It turns out chess.com was fine on my phone.
Hi Sigmoid,
Thank you, I believe the culprit has been eradicated!
I really appreciate your help!!
The addon detector found the culprit, in my case it was angry frogs
according to addon detector I had airpush and leadbolt in my task manager (default). I just uninstalled it and re-installed from market, now addon detector isn’t finding any instances of those two vermin. I’ll drop back in if they crop up again.
Thanks for the help, it solved my problem!
Yes that worked. Awesome! thank you. it was annoying the heck out of me. addon detector. works very well.