6 Tips to Sweep Adware out of Your Android Devices
Have you ever experienced advertising pop-ups appearing randomly on your computer or mobile?
Even if you’ve never heard of “adware” before, you may be familiar with the experience. Adware is a piece of software that displays advertising pop-ups, sometimes videos, on your devices without you having any control over them.
While adware isn’t necessarily harmful to your device, it’s still annoying. So is there any way to get rid of it? Let’s find out how to stop adware on Android devices in this article.
6 Tips to Detect and Stop Adware on your Android Devices
Knowing how you can get adware is important to understand what the best practices are to avoid getting them.
There are several ways you can get it, but it's mainly because you either downloaded a free program that has a piece of adware hidden inside (installed automatically alongside the program without your knowledge), or you got it from your browser (mainly by installing an extension or clicking on some pop-ups). Keeping this into account, here are the best practices to aid adware removal from your Android devices.
1Check If Your Devices Respond Slower than Before
Adware takes up additional system memory and resources in order to download ads from specific servers and display them. So if your devices are responding unexpectedly slowly, this may be a sign of adware presence.
2Pay Attention to Your Browser Homepage
Some adware will go so far as to change your browser homepage without your knowledge, hoping that you may mistakenly tap on their link before realizing the issue. Should this occur, revert to your original homepage via browser settings and conduct an adware scan using anti-virus application. If the adware blocks this action, attempt to override this through the anti-virus application. If the issue persists, check out additional solutions below
3Click Carefully on Pop-up Ads (or Don’t Click Them At All)
It's very common to have pop-ups appearing while you’re browsing the internet. They are often very annoying because they prevent you from having a comfortable website navigation experience. Because of this, users often click on them to make them disappear. This is where the chance is high that, instead of clicking to make the pop-up disappear, you click on the button that downloads the adware on your device.
So, be very careful when you click on pop-ups, or don’t click on them at all.
4Clean Browser Cache
The cache is a small memory where your browser stores a lot of data in order to make your browsing experience smoother and faster. When you get adware, however, the software can use the data stored in your cache to create more targeted advertising. Sometimes, clearing your browser cache and history can help a lot in stopping adware.
5Remove Browser Extensions
As we’ve mentioned earlier, browser extension is a possible source of adware. However, it isn’t always easy to pinpoint the exact one that contains it. Nontheless, there are some methods worth trying. For example, since when those annoying advertising pop-ups started to appear? Maybe just after you’ve installed a particular extension? If this is the case, then that particular extension may be the true villain that needs to be taken down. If you can’t identify which extension got you the adware, you can also start removing the ones you don’t strictly need.
6MDM Solutions
MDM solutions are centralized platforms that provide security features such as remote troubleshooting, remote updating, app management, compliance monitoring, and defending against cyber threats. While it is true that MDM solutions aren’t strictly created to remove adware from your Android devices, they are still way more complete than normal ad blocking tools such as AdBlock and Adware Removal Tool by TSA, so it is fair to say that they are better forms of protection against all kinds of adware for your endpoints. Therefore, it does not hurt to try out a professional MDM solution like AirDroid Business and:
- Enforce strict policies such as restricting downloads from untrusted sources
- Use app blocklist/allowlist to restrict application activities
- Enable Kiosk mode to isolate all unwanted applications
- Monitor and identify apps with adware behaviors
These powerful features can offer your organization’s endpoints and mobile devices strong resilience against adware.
Final Thoughts
That being said, ultimately the best method to stop adware is the one that suits you best. As adware can disrupt your browsing experience and compromise the security of mobile devices, make your choice today to minimize the damage adware may do to your Android devices.
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