How to get rid of the new spam ad on Android
Yesterday my smartphone was “taken over” by a weird ad that kept popping up at the top of my screen (see screenshots). If these look familiar, then this post is for you. Let me tell you how it happened.
Yesterday I received a notification from Google Play informing me that I had several pending updates. I took a quick look at the list and hit Update all.
A few hours later a banner started appearing at the top of my screen. And that kept happening whether I was using an application or when I was on the native screens (settings, home screen etc.)
Tapping the small opt out button in the right corner pointed to a tracker.tpc.re empty page. When trying to turn it off, I was redirected to the Google Ads page. The intention was to make me believe that the banner was in fact a Google ad, which was very clever.
After some research I found out that the problem was related to the application Premium Wallpapers HD. I don’t know how the malware managed to infiltrate it. What I do know, is that the ad disappeared and never popped up again after clearing data of the app.
Uninstalling it would be also a good idea. I hope this is helpful. I will update the post, if I find out more information. I don’t know if this is relevant or not, but I am using a Nexus 5 with Android 5.1.1.
May God bless your soul, you are a life saver!
I noticed the same ad banner some time last night and it annoyed me like hell cause I couldn’t track down the culprit. I even submitted a complaint to Samsung. Now that I think about it, I haven’t opened the app since its last update until yesterday evening. I guess that’s what triggered it.
Thank you so much 🙂
Julia, I’m glad I could help. I uninstalled the app just to make sure that I managed to get rid of the ad.
Dude you are the greatest ever. Thank you for this.
I no longer want to smash my phone.
Mersi fain 😀
Awesome! Thanks for the info, I was going mad.
Many thanks for your post!
I was crazy about it and couldn’t find what was happening. So sad.
I uninstalled the app.
Fingers crossed!
Vielen Dank!
Thank you, million times!!!!
Yesterday I was crazy trying to block this annoying banner, of course I couldn”t,
until I find this post!!!
Thanks very much for your report .I removed that app Premium Wallpapers HD and no adds more
Andrei, meriti un tir de bere!
Iam still getting this annoying ads bar on top on the screen. I tried looking up for the HD WALLPAPER app…but i dont hv any wallpaper apps. Stoped all the google based ads in the settings. Not sure wat else to do/uninstall. Kindly help. Thx
Probably the best option would be to restore your phone to factory settings without backing up your apps. This should solve the problem.
Thank you so much. This app also deains your battery. So better flag this app as inapropriate in play store. This could help others.
Thankyou soooo much!!! life saver! I just uninstalled the app, hope this works!
Nic
Thankyou so much!
My sincere thanks for this. I have been struggling with this advertising spam for weeks trying to get to the source. There was no way I was going to submit my IMEI as they wanted to supposedly silence the ads. I had needlessly uninstalled, and lost all my settings on, several innocent apps in my attempts to get rid of the spam.
I hope the scum responsible for this shocking advertising outrage burn in hell.
Best regards from Australia
Hi and thanks for advice. However I’ve had the same pop up even if I had Premium Wallpaper HD but I removed it a lot of time ago. A couple of days ago I upgraded my LG G3 to Marshmellow C variant (for Italian Vodafone devices). Till now (April 26th, 2016) I never saw it. How it could have been possible? May malware had captured Premium Wallpaper phones book? Or could it have been created directly by Premium Wallpaper HD?
Thank you so much for this advice.
You saved my day!
All the best
Harald