Is your mobile phone losing battery life quickly or racking up a lot data usage? It’s possible an app on your device has hijacked your phone to serve invisible ads at your expense.
Smartphone users have to contend with app adware meant to steal advertising dollars while serving invisible ads that cause problems for users. According to a study released Thursday by ad fraud detection firm Forensiq, invisible ads are being served on Android, Apple and Windows devices to artificially inflate viewer numbers.
Just over 13 percent of ads meant to be seen by users are invisible, according the report. These ads are not just a problem for advertisers, who stand to lose more than $1 billion this year, but also for unsuspecting app users.
These apps use malicious behavior like operating in the background, modifying and deleting memory, preventing the devices from sleeping and tracking users’ locations. Many of these behaviors have nothing to do with the app’s stated function.
The study found that Android phones had a higher proportion of fraud risk (14.8 percent) as compared with iOS (11.7 percent) and Windows (8.8 percent). Android users may be at greater risk due to the lax regulation of apps on the marketplace. Apple standards are much more rigorous for app approval, yet many scam apps slip through their net disguised as reputable software.
The study found that these bogus ads consume as much as two gigabytes of connection data per day. Users never see these ads, but they run in the background as long as possible. That level of use will sap a data plan in a matter of days.
“We wanted to show the public how blatant and obvious and hurtful all this fraud is — not just to advertisers who pay for ads that no one sees but also people using these apps on these tiny devices that are bandwidth-limited and power-limited,” Forensiq’s chief scientist, Mike Andrews, told Mashable.
The researchers made their conclusions by tracking the inner workings of ad exchanges — digital marketplaces that auction off the screen space in front to advertisers in real time as a page or app is loading. Most exchanges churn through billions of these transactions every day.
“We don’t know exactly everyone who is involved, but certainly many folks are benefiting here,” said firm CEO and founder David Sendroff. Many parties may have their hands on the money, including the app developers themselves.
Smartphone users can do some simple things to prevent a spike in their bills or draining their batteries. First, users can check their phones for unusually high data and battery usage. Switching off data access for apps that don’t need it is another good strategy.
Shopping for apps carefully and reading user reviews will help as well. The researchers noted that problems come from smaller, lesser-known app developers than highly reviewed and popular ones.
