Are you getting spam notifications on your Android? Here's how to stop them.

[Vexx]

Started getting these a few days ago. My notification bar was filling up with crap ass ads that have no business in a system tray.

Turns out a new "technology feature" that pushes ads through the notification channel is being added to some applications (often installed without actual notice in an update, sorry but "stuff made better" is not a notice).

There's a several apps in the Google Play store for free to detect which application has turned evil. I like the "Addons Detector" by Bjorge because its open source and does nothing but that.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...ZGV0ZWN0b3IiXQ..
http://www.appbrain.com/app/airpush-...irpushdetector

Of course, once it points out the app, you have to delete the app to make it stop... no matter how much you love it, it has turned evil after all.

[synaesthetic]

Wow really? Advertisements in the notification tray? That's pretty shady stuff...

Fortunately, I am a very weird smartphone user in that I don't install an app for something if the browser can do it just as well.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Wow really? Advertisements in the notification tray? That's pretty shady stuff...

Fortunately, I am a very weird smartphone user in that I don't install an app for something if the browser can do it just as well.

The particular culprit in this case was a small freeware tool for editing mp3s for use as ringtones, etc. I had tried it and forgotten about it because I just tend to do such stuff on my desktop. Since Google Play offers "auto-update" on patches, after a while I was just "yeah, yeah, whatever, click" and one of the patches added this "wonderful new AirPush technology". Of course, to me the malware part is that Android apparently relies on the app to identify itself as the source of the notification and it wasn't.

So I googled for spam notifications, discovered this "wonderful new technology", googled for detection software, and "yippee ki yay".

http://phandroid.com/2011/04/30/airp...-its-horrible/
http://www.airpush.com/aboutus/technology

I think this company (Airpush, Inc.) constitutes an active form of technology Evil and hope it dies a horrible deserved death. This is no better than the spam ads that used to appear as a "Windows Notification" message misrepresenting itself as an operating system message.
And no, I don't care that they offer an "opt out tool" on their site, as far as I am concerned they're just building a database of IMEI data like spam ads that want you to "reply to unsubscribe".