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Weird pop-ups on Android

Moon.man751
By Moon.man751
in Phones and Tablets
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Hello, I've got a situation I hope you can help with. My mom has a Samsung Galaxy s22.  Occasionally she will get animated pop-ups that take up the entire screen. When the pop-ups close it opens up the Android app store listing for various apps. I'm really struggling to identify what's generating these pop-ups. Nothing shows up in the recently used applications menu.

 

Is there any way to continuously display what app is currently running similar to an FPS counter? That way, I could identify what app is generating the pop-ups and remove it.

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34 minutes ago, Moon.man751 said:

Hello, I've got a situation I hope you can help with. My mom has a Samsung Galaxy s22.  Occasionally she will get animated pop-ups that take up the entire screen. When the pop-ups close it opens up the Android app store listing for various apps. I'm really struggling to identify what's generating these pop-ups. Nothing shows up in the recently used applications menu.

 

Is there any way to continuously display what app is currently running similar to an FPS counter? That way, I could identify what app is generating the pop-ups and remove it.

Hi there, welcome, An easy way to solve it is to do a reset of phone. I'd do a backup of any pics etc to computer. It would be best to reset and do a fresh boot of android what would mean logging in to google account on it, it would mean apps need to be redownloaded but this would sort the problem. It doesn't take long to do.

 

 

Bit of a tech guy, converted to PC's when consoles did not entertain me enough, the last console being an Xbox, was fun with Halo multi-play though. But  the want to discover, to test, to learn more about computers drove me to levels I had never known...

 

Some GPU's I have had, 8800GTS 384MB, 7800GT, GEFORCE 4 MX440, 250GTS,  770 GTX, 1650 GTX, RTX 3050 Plus many other GPU's over the years...

 

The respect I have for LMG is massive like a black hole, sucking in all the knowledge, I watch their awesome video's, their knowledge is like that of a God. Seriously some say they are number 1 in the whole wide world. LMG is like the INTEL fabrication plant. Beaming with technology goodness...

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Go into Settings -> Apps -> Manage apps and see if there are any suspicious apps you didn't install. Also, you when pop-up ad appears, try to open list of recently opened apps. If you're using gestures, just swipe up and hold, and if you're using button navigation touch ||| at the bottom of the screen. Then, you should recognize the app by the name or an app icon.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

You need to monitor DNS requests!

 

Hold the power key and on the display, hold the icon for power off

 

Tap safe mode.  This disables all third-party programs.

 

Go download Rethinkdns from F-droid and immediately start it and go to the

 

DNS section and go to the log.

 

It will continuously capture every website request happening and keep that entire log until you clear it.

 

To setup ad or malicious ad-blocking or block websites in general you can do it three ways

 

1) Setup Virtualbox on a PC and download Ubuntu Linux and run that installer inside the virtual machine.  Once rebooted into the Ubuntu system, all in the virtualbox software, not rebooting the whole pc, install pi-hole

 

https://pi-hole.net


2) install https://wireshark.org/

 

Then type in

 

dns

 

into the filter box and see exactly what websites are loading.  You may need to go into the edit preferences

 

In name resolution

 

Check enable

 

IP network name

 

and use captured packets as dns resolutoon

 

So instead of seeing numbers you see website names.

 

3) Go to https://NextDNS.io/

 

Setup a free account there and on the android device, use "private DNS" in the cellular and wifi settings, and put in the https://dns.nextdns.io/12345

 

url that is given so that you can push all website requests to the cloud and have a webpage to go to and monitor what is loading.

 

Go to the log in nextdns website, not analytics, as it shows longer-range data.

: JRE #1914 Siddarth Kara

How bad is e-waste?  Listen to that Joe Rogan episode.

 

"Now you get what you want, but do you want more?
- Bob Marley, Rastaman Vibration album 1976

 

Windows 11 will just force business to "recycle" "obscolete" hardware.  Microsoft definitely isn't bothered by this at all, and seems to want hardware produced just a few years ago to be considered obsolete.  They have also not shown any interest nor has any other company in a similar financial position, to help increase tech recycling whatsoever.  Windows 12 might be cloud-based and be a monthly or yearly fee.

 

Software suggestions


Just get f.lux [Link removed due to forum rules] so your screen isn't bright white at night, a golden orange in place of stark 6500K bluish white.

released in 2008 and still being improved.

 

Dark Reader addon for webpages.  Pick any color you want for both background and text (background and foreground page elements).  Enable the preview mode on desktop for Firefox and Chrome addon, by clicking the dark reader addon settings, Choose dev tools amd click preview mode.

 

NoScript or EFF's privacy badger addons can block many scripts and websites that would load and track you, possibly halving page load time!

 

F-droid is a place to install open-source software for android, Antennapod, RethinkDNS, Fennec which is Firefox with about:config, lots of performance and other changes available, mozilla KB has a huge database of what most of the settings do.  Most software in the repository only requires Android 5 and 6!

 

I recommend firewall apps (blocks apps) and dns filters (redirect all dns requests on android, to your choice of dns, even if overridden).  RethinkDNS is my pick and I set it to use pi-hole, installed inside Ubuntu/Debian, which is inside Virtualbox, until I go to a website, nothing at all connects to any other server.  I also use NextDNS.io to do the same when away from home wi-fi or even cellular!  I can even tether from cellular to any device sharing via wi-fi, and block anything with dns set to NextDNS, regardless if the device allows changing dns.  This style of network filtration is being overridden by software updates on some devices, forcing a backup dns provuder, such as google dns, when built in dns requests are not connecting.  Without a complete firewall setup, dns redirection itself is no longer always effective.

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