We're at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, and mobile adware is a topic that's making the news here. Ads provide a genuine opportunity for app developers to create a business - but there's a growing trend that is beginning to annoy Android users. Dave Kim talks about annoying madware and how to make use of madware detectors, like Norton Spot Ad Detector.
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Hi, guys. This is Dave Kim, a product manager at Norton. Have you ever wondered aboutthese strange alerts popping up in your Android device, like in your notification bar, or newicons on your home screen? Well, it may not just because your child's messing with yourdevice, or because your friends are pranking you.
It might actually be something called mobile adware, or what we call madware. Madware'ssomething we've seen grow quite a bit over the last year. So what does madware actuallylook like.?
Let's take an example of a very popular utilities app. It's pretty useful. It's got things for ringer,your GPS, Wi-Fi, pretty useful stuff. There's a little ad on top. That's not a big deal. But whathappens when you actually exit out of the app?
Well, suddenly it takes you to this Top Apps of the Day. Well, I don't know how I got here. Itactually forces you to go to this web page outside of the application. It's pretty annoying,actually. In fact, this particular application actually rotates through a bunch of different typesof ads, including popups, as well as even adding icons to your desktop. So if you keep doingthis a couple of times, you're going to end up with a screen like this.
So how do you, as a consumer, know which of these apps are actually pushing theseirritating advertisements to your device? And how do you know which ones are the worstoffenders? Well, we here at Norton created something called Norton Spot. And what it does,it's a very nifty tool that allows you to quickly spot the apps that are causing theseannoyances.
So after the scan is done, Norton Spot will share what it found. You see from the Behaviorstab the different types of actions that offending apps are taking. If you click on one of thebehaviors, you actually see which app is actually doing that behavior. So it helps you identifywhich of the apps is doing the things that you don't like the most.
Click again, and it takes you to the app view itself. So you can see what it actually is doing,how high it is on the potential annoyance scale. And even better, you can uninstall with theclick of a button.
Of course, guys, keep in mind that not all ad networks are bad. Ad networks offer a legitimateopportunity to encourage app developers to create really cool, fantastic apps that we have on our devices today. But it's important that you as a customer are well informed, and thatyou have the option to make your own choices around which apps and which resultingbehaviors that you want to keep on your device. Thank you.
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