“For many weeks now, mobile users on both iOS and Android have been encountering a problem where visits to certain websites and apps have automatically redirected them to the platform’s app store to download various games,” Sarah Perez reports for TechCrunch. “The issue involves errant ad networks, which should be blocking these shady ads, but aren’t. Meanwhile, mobile consumers simply trying to use an app or read an article are treated to a poor user experience.”
“The ads promote games like Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Game of War, Zelda Dungeon, and other titles,” Perez reports. “Affected sites and applications have included Imgur, the AP, NBC, Hearst properties, various newspaper sites and blogs, eBay, Perez Hilton, SomethingAwful, WeatherUnderground, TwitPic, Cheezburger.com, Slickdeals, Twitchy, NHL, and many others. This kind of issue has arisen in the past — many times unfortunately. In Imgur’s case in particular, Reddit users have been complaining about the problem for at least two months now. Over a week ago, the company responded on the site, saying that it was trying to figure out which ad network was at fault, but it was hard to pin down.”
“These auto re-directing ads have been affecting both Android and iOS platforms, on both apps and websites, and come in through various third-party networks. The ads move around, too, making them even more difficult to track down and block. It’s unknown at this time which networks have been involved to date, but the ‘auto-clicking’ ads could have a source that gets changed after the ad is first approved, which would make them hard to spot, it has been suggested,” Perez reports. “In addition, networks sometimes buy inventory from other networks, blurring the line as to who’s responsible.”
“For some, like NBC, the solution was to block the entire mobile gaming category from its on-site advertising,” Perez reports. “The company confirmed to TechCrunch that its issue originated from remnant ad inventory controlled by Google, and it has now resolved the problem.”
“Reports, like this from Digiday, have suggested that the problem stems from the gaming companies, like King or Supercell, whose apps are being promoted. But more suspect are the ad networks themselves. Many of these companies have bad practices, and in the past, some on Android have even gone so far as to push co-installs (when you install one app, they install another) or hijack your default search engine,” Perez reports. “What’s more likely is that some networks have directly – or without knowing, because they buy from others – organized this in order to get better performance. Game makers like King and Supercell may not even be aware, because they buy so much media across multiple networks and affiliation platforms, explains Appsfire CEO Ouriel Ohayon, commenting on the issue.”
“Apple also has a responsibility, Ohayon notes, saying that they could randomly sample ads from various apps for quality and communicate regularly with networks, asking them to comply with certain rules and regulations. They could also fix it so that their Safari mobile browser would block automatic redirects. Of course, this would be a difficult undertaking on Apple’s part, but the way it stands today is that these kinds of redirects are ruining the user experience and consumers end up blaming the publisher, the promoted app, and the platform, like Apple or Google,” Perez reports. “We know Apple is aware of the problem, but the company declined to provide a comment today. Google has not yet responded to our request for comment. Stay tuned.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, as many of you know from our discussions via email, we have been dealing with the problem for awhile now – and it’s been getting progressively worse. Finally, blessedly, we came across this article!
Tracking down the rogue ads isn’t just hard, it’s pretty much impossible. Many users have been helping our efforts by providing code, URLs, and screenshots. These rogue ads are purposely trying to hide their origins. Normally, with most ad networks and responsible advertisers, when you get an ad you don’t want to display, you can use the end URL to block the ad within the ad network’s controls and it’s done. Not with these. Also, the names of the apps themselves do not show up in any of the ad networks’ tools for blocking unwanted advertisers. On top of it all, we weren’t (and are still not) getting these ads on MDN on our iOS devices while running Safari, so we didn’t even know that there’s a problem until the emails started pouring in.
Again, to clarify, this issue only affects mobile users who are running mobile browsers to access websites, including MacDailyNews. Mobile users who access our site using the MacDailyNews app are unaffected. Mobile users can, as always, visit us via MacDailyNews app, where these ads do not occur.
For weeks now, we’ve been literally turning off entire ad networks trying to track down these things and exterminate them. They just keep coming. So, thanks to Perez’s article, we’ve just followed NBC’s lead and blocked the entire mobile gaming category from remnant ad inventory. Fingers crossed that this works! If it stops this scourge, we’ll take whatever revenue hit results.
This situation needs to be addressed! We’ve been spending many hours on this, trying everything and blowing quite a bit of hard-to-come-by January income, to no avail.
Please understand that we do not want to run these shitty ads, pardon our French. We want nothing more than to block these ads forever. And we’ll continue trying. We’d like to send whoever’s responsible for this crap sandwich to a small jail cell with a TV they can never turn off that just keeps automatically switching channels every minute to the next commercial.
We’re begging Apple, the ad networks, and whoever else to do what they can to resolve this vexing scourge. We apologize for not being able to turn off all of our ads (if we could, we would, but we need them – the good ads from our valued sponsors – in order to survive) and for the poor experience that some idiot somewhere so stupidly thinks is a good method to promote app downloads. Seriously, making users hate the name of the app you’re supposedly promoting is a bad idea, marketing genius.
Thank you for your patience and thanks to so many of our readers who have helped and continue to help us track these things down and exterminate them.
Again, we apologize for this situation and thanks for your patience and help.
Thanks for the explanation.
And MDN, thanks for the effort go you and is. Hang in there and keep providing such a great service.
😜 even when I disagree on your specific opinion 😄
EN
I’ve NEVER had a problem and didn’t know this existed, until this article because I use the MDN App. My solution, just download the MDN app and be happy that the App uses the iAd Platform, that has never had this problem and is user-friendly because of its light banner-style nature that doesn’t take over and hi-jack the whole screen.
– D
P.S. This seems like a GREAT opportunity for Apple to expand their iAd Platform for people / companies that are having to deal with these issues and market the fact that these auto-hi-jacking issues don’t exist on their platform
I too have been annoyed by this problem when reading MDN. I tried some advice on the Internet to reset location in iOS settings but that is a very temporary fix.
While the MDN app works to eliminate this problem, I am a fan of the browser as much as I am a fan of apps, and prefer MDN in the browser.
So, to fix this problem, I use the Puffin browser, which gives iOS (and Android if you use it) devices a proper desktop class browser on smartphones and tablets.
The redirect problem does not affect Puffin.
I still try with Safari and am typing this comment in Safari but when I get these redirect things pissing me off (as it does for MDN and everyone) I fire up Puffin to continue reading there.
While I do love Puffin I wish MDN every success in finding out the ad networks concerned and I hope the companies doing this cosmically pay somehow alongside Apple smacking them by figuring out how to block their shenanigans permanently.
Could Apple kick apps that are the “beneficiaries” of these re-directs off the app store? Are the app developers a part of this? If not, who benefits from the re-directs? Asking, because I don’t know, although I have certainly been the victim of them.
I had to read that article twice. Things are not as simple as they might first seem.
Apple could put a preference option on iOS Safari and block app store launches. There are browser extensions that already do this on Desktop Safari.
Was going to point out how ironic it was this article was here until I saw MDN’s take.
I have removed MDN from my bookmarks and try once a month to come back since I can’t actually see any content here due to the constant redirects to the app store.
If it happens again I am permanently gone.
I always use the MDN app, didn’t even realize there was an issue until reading this.
nekogami13, downloading the app for this site would solve all your issues.
No.
I am not going to download 10 different apps so I can look at the tech news I want.
I have a web browser, I don’t need to replace it.
Well then piss off and STFU dummy.
Don’t be stupid he is absolutely right why should h have to go between various apps to read different articles if he has a varied reading risk. After all I is the whole purpose of MDN to bring all the various sources of Apple News together so people do t actually have to do similar at the sharp end. So you might a well tell people to go to all the various sites rathe than get it agrigated through MDN. It’s choice and it should not be dictated by spammers.
He was told of a simple remedy to get around the problem until it is resolved. If he can’t handle having another app then he can just go elsewhere. Throwing a temper tantrum like a five year old won’t get him anywhere.
It’s clearly not MacDailyNews fault, so why would you punish the victim?
Download and use the MDN app. Patronize their good advertisers. Support MDN!
un-American traitors.
Because none of the other sites have this issue.
I can not see anything on this site because of the issue, so why come here?
I refuse to download an app for every site I want to visit when I have 1 Web browser that does it more conveniently.
nekogami13,
You sound like the type of guy who blames the rape victim instead of the rapist.
Can we please STOP relating tech related issues like these to RAPE. These type of metaphors are in no way close to each other, let alone in the same ballpark or in that case UNIVERSE. It’s an insult to true victims of rape and other hideous-like crimes and makes you look like a dim-witted moron.
Words can have multiple meanings.
Rape: The wanton destruction or spoiling of a place or area: the rape of the Russian countryside.
MacDailyNews and their users, and many other sites and their users, are being raped by a hidden assailant.
Be careful before you throw around “dim-witted moron” disparagements lest they boomerang.
STFU, you symptom of the hideous American Argument Culture. GFY, you stupid stain.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/04/05/reviews/980405.05macfart.html
Oh, and have a nice day! 🙂
Shut up you Nazi bastard son of Adolph Hitler.
See how I worked THAT one in. 😉
Finally someone is reporting on this issue. I was wondering what was going on when I suddenly was sent to the App Store. I had this happen twice today on your site and once on another. I’ve also been having it happen on a social networking app.
Hope you can find out who this is and block them.
Just got two redirects on my iPhone from two separate pages on MDN.
The sad part is that when I see the games flash up again and again, I get progressively bitter towards them. I might have downloaded and enjoyed some had I not been so rudely introduced!
When I see redirects like this, I make a note of the offending app/game/company and go out of my way to promote their competitor. I encourage others to do the same.. it lets them know they won’t get away with this.
I don’t fault the innocent website that displayed the redirect, often they don’t even know it is happening.
Thank you, MDN, for this news!
Another thing we can do is to contact the developer of any apps we are redirected to and tell them what is happening. Then say if it is a deliberate ploy by them that we will boycott them or if they know nothing about it they should contact their ad agencies and tell them to stop the practice.
Good article. However, just as I was beginning to read it I was flopped to the App Store automatically for a game. Looks like the solution didn’t work. 😞
It may take up to a few hours for the blocked ads to drop out of the queue.
To the App Store. This time is was for the open table app, and not for the usual game apps. Apparently getting rid of ad categories isn’t the complete solution as apparently the offending ad network will drop in other ad categories. Thanks for the efforts in trying to track this down.
Fully quit your iOS Safari browser – better yet, restart your iOS device – you may be seeing old cached code.
“On top of it, we weren’t (and are still not) getting these ads on MDN on our iOS devices while running Safari, so we didn’t even know that there’s a problem until the emails started pouring in.” – MDN
Wow, these crooks are thorough. It sounds like they are detecting your network and hiding the malicious ads from you (and other website owners) so you stay unaware of the ads for more time.
Have you tried using a proxy to hide your IP address? I’ve never done that on iOS, but it’s easy to set up on Macs. You might see different ads when your browser is pretending to be from another location.
That’s not how it works. MDN’s iOS browsing history simply did not trigger these type of ads to be served. I use Safari on iPad to access MDN and I haven’t seen any of these ads, either.
I also access MDN with Safari via iPad and these ads are SO constant. I actually DID blame MDN for a while until I read this, also thinking like others, how ironic it appeared. I’m still a little skeptical (“We didn’t know” is rarely an excuse I buy), that being said I hope they’re being honest and if the community at large is aware that MDN is doing everything they can than that’s enough for me.
I almost left MDN for good, glad I got to see what may have really been going on.
EVERYBODY is having these issues.
MDN is, as usual, being entirely straightforward.
Ironic that before I could read this, I was automatically directed to a soft porn app, Ashley Madison (though the url was ashleyrnadison…). Oh, and I’m using Safari on iOS.
Good luck with your efforts to eliminate these morons.
I get these stupid ads and app store redirects every time I come to MDN using either my iPad or my iPhone. I don’t have any games on either one of these devices. To prevent this problem I’ve taken to using my Kindle Fire for visiting Mac Daily News.
Just got nailed with another one of those crazy ads and App Store redirects. Apple you need to fix this issue!
Written with my iPhone.
I just got another redirection to a game in iTunes, from the main page, before opening this article. Didn’t catch the name of the game though. So it’s not completely shut down.😰
MDN.. I have been sending u alerts, urls, banners for months now regarding this issue.
But besides redirects and screen takeovers which are Nusances
The most concerning issue for me is URLs TRIGGERING EXECUTABLES on IOS…. The suspect pages are trigering the app store app.
That is a huge reason for concern .
How and why should a url or page ir banner be able to trigger an app on my device.. trigger and executable ???
This is very dangerous to me .I have reported this to Apple and provided links, urls and etc..
They have responded to me and asked for additinal info..
But they have not provided a solution or an explanation to ease my concern !
It’s not a cause for concern, other than the nuisance.
It’s a simple bit of code: target=”itunes_store”
Just as target=”_new” opens a new browser window or tab, “target=”itunes_store” opens the App Store on iOS devices.
You should be asking Apple what they’re doing to stop ads from hijacking Safari for iOS.
It is not a concern when apple allows an executable to be triggered by someone or thing. …without my intention to do so ?
App store is just another app ..
How about all other apps? Can they trigger any app they want on my device ?
And thats not a reason to be worried?
Wow.. Is all i can say ..
Low stars yet zero insight towards my questions ..
Wow.. Wow
Apple in many ways is a victem of its blind worshipers !
I have been annoyed by this for a long time. I blamed MDN for this but now stand corrected. Sorry for the wrong accusation.
I suggest when we are redirected we write to the game/app company and let them know we are pissed off with it and we won’t download any apps we are redirected to.
Just got redirected to an App Store game.
Does MDN have an Android app to help out those poor soles?
Android “soles.” 🙂 Nice Freudian slip.
And here I was just thinking you guys were just greedy!
Thanks for taking action – you are spot on about the experience.
I am very pleased to finally see some information about this problem. I live in Bali, Indonesia and as a daily MDN reader, I’ve been experiencing this rudeness since last summer. I thought possibly it was only an issue with non-US or southeast asian networks. I never assumed it was MDN. So to help out, I sent URLs and screenshots to MDN along with a description of the issue. I was a bit disappointed in that I never received any acknowledgement by MDN that they had received my info. A simple form response like “Thanks for your message. We’re aware of the issue and we’re working on it” would have been a nice gesture to let me know that I hadn’t completely wasted 20 minutes of my time trying to help out our community. Sorry for the complaint and I hope blocking the game category finally resolves the issue.
I have had this problem for nearly a year now do researched to find if others had a similar problem. Unsurprisingly others did and recorded how they had questioned Apple as to whether some form of dodgy malware had got on thir iPads. lol Apple would say that that was impossible and nothing else. Yet surely even back then they must have been aware of the problem and At least said they were investigating it. Worse still though how has some supposedly reputable company got away with this behaviour for do long, surely they are risking prosecution at best and bankruptcy at worst if they are identified. Or is what is effectively hacking to all intents and purposes an acceptable part of commerce these days.
The hugely annoying thing about this is, it’s a problem Apple know about and were meant to be fixing. I’m willing to bet most people don’t know that this was actually meant to have been sorted with iOS 8. Clearly it isn’t working…
http://m.tuaw.com/2014/06/18/ios-8-safari-can-block-ads-from-automatically-redirecting-to-the/
MDN: “shitty” isn’t French.
“Pardon my French” or “Excuse my French” is a common English language phrase ostensibly disguising profanity as French. The phrase is uttered in an attempt to excuse the user of profanity or curses in the presence of those offended by it under the pretense of the words being part of a foreign language. The phrase has found large use in broadcast television and family films where less offensive words are preceded by “pardon my French” to emphasize their meaning without violating censorship or rating guidelines. A good example is in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Cameron calls Mr. Rooney and says, “Pardon my French, but you’re an asshole”. In another segment, Bueller says, “Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you were to shove a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you’d have a diamond”. – Wikipedia
uh, it was a fscking joke, pardon my German/Swedish/Dutch/Indo-European/Latin.*
*ORIGIN early 16th cent.: of Germanic origin (compare Swedish dialect focka and Dutch dialect fokkelen); possibly from an Indo-European root meaning ‘strike,’ shared by Latin pugnus ‘fist.’
Merde.
Please know that I LOVE MDN! 🙂
I suspect this malicious advertising app can detect your location too when redirecting to open up the App Store. I live in Asia and when reading MDN, I lately discover it would randomly send me to the App Store showing up some games app that is in Chinese!
Good deal, MDN. Good to read the article. As much as I complained about this, I never thought it was you intentionally doing it. Just didn’t realize how much those bastards were hiding.
I’m already blocking many ad networks in my hosts file, so that could be why I also haven’t been avoided by this problem. Or maybe that my “advertising profile” is not associated with gaming.