Android phone - mind of its own

[Deleted User]

My wife Android phone appears to be under the control of a higher being

It keeps on bringing up random websites (Argos being a favourite) - with no input from anyone

We sit there with the phone on a table and watch it control itself

The screen keeps on flashing too

She has cleaned the screen properly and the screen is intact

Short of rebuilding the phone / reinstalling Android - is this a known issue with Android 7 ?

JJ_Egan

Not that i remember for 7 .

Best factory reset and add no apps to test .

Reads to me as probably a deals app of some sort .

PRAISETHESUN

My thought is either a dodgy touchscreen, or a dodgy app running in the background. I'd try looking at what is running, and disabling/uninstalling apps one by one and see if you can narrow it down? Failing that, a full reset is probably the next port of call.

poppellerant

Have you opened Chrome and closed all the open tabs? I've seen a phone quite happily spitting out pop-ups for hours, only to find that Chrome has a dozen tabs open.  Once all the tabs had been closed, the pop-ups stopped.

It would also be worth your while going through the installed apps and removing anything suspicious or that you don't need.

[Deleted User]

poppellerant said:

Have you opened Chrome and closed all the open tabs? I've seen a phone quite happily spitting out pop-ups for hours, only to find that Chrome has a dozen tabs open.  Once all the tabs had been closed, the pop-ups stopped.

It would also be worth your while going through the installed apps and removing anything suspicious or that you don't need.

The phone has been switched off several times and rebooted is 

poppellerant

Deleted_User said:

poppellerant said:

Have you opened Chrome and closed all the open tabs? I've seen a phone quite happily spitting out pop-ups for hours, only to find that Chrome has a dozen tabs open.  Once all the tabs had been closed, the pop-ups stopped.

It would also be worth your while going through the installed apps and removing anything suspicious or that you don't need.

The phone has been switched off several times and rebooted is 

Open Chrome on your phone then close all open tabs.  The process of restarting the phone might not close open tabs in Chrome.

YellowCarBlueCar

I had this with my phone, took a lot of tracking down, but I eventually found that a barcode scanning app that I had been using for years had been messed with to include aggressive AdWare which did as you described.  The app developer appeared to be unaware, as suddenly the reviews for the app were filled with complaints, but the developer was insisting no AdWare.

Anyhow, it might be worth checking for any unexpected app usage (e.g. something that hasn't been intentionally used, but is consuming battery), and looking to see if others have found a similar problem.

Think this was mine...
https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/20/f/barcode-reader-apps-on-google-play-found-using-new-ad-fraud-technique.html

[Deleted User]

YellowCarBlueCar said:

I had this with my phone, took a lot of tracking down, but I eventually found that a barcode scanning app that I had been using for years had been messed with to include aggressive AdWare which did as you described.  The app developer appeared to be unaware, as suddenly the reviews for the app were filled with complaints, but the developer was insisting no AdWare.

Anyhow, it might be worth checking for any unexpected app usage (e.g. something that hasn't been intentionally used, but is consuming battery), and looking to see if others have found a similar problem.

Think this was mine...
https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/20/f/barcode-reader-apps-on-google-play-found-using-new-ad-fraud-technique.html

My wife has no apps on her phone at all -  not even BBC News !

flaneurs_lobster

Deleted_User said:

YellowCarBlueCar said:

I had this with my phone, took a lot of tracking down, but I eventually found that a barcode scanning app that I had been using for years had been messed with to include aggressive AdWare which did as you described.  The app developer appeared to be unaware, as suddenly the reviews for the app were filled with complaints, but the developer was insisting no AdWare.

Anyhow, it might be worth checking for any unexpected app usage (e.g. something that hasn't been intentionally used, but is consuming battery), and looking to see if others have found a similar problem.

Think this was mine...
https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/20/f/barcode-reader-apps-on-google-play-found-using-new-ad-fraud-technique.html

My wife has no apps on her phone at all -  not even BBC News !

Must be some apps on the phone or it wouldn't work as a phone. If it keeps bringing up random websites then there has to be a web browser on there at least.
Does a factory reset work on a phone that's running a version of Android that's no longer supported?

Laz123

Have you run a virus scan with say Avast?

[Deleted User]

Laz123 said:

Have you run a virus scan with say Avast?

Laz123 said:

Have you run a virus scan with say Avast?

Yes that's the first thing we did