A Tablet with Questionable Sites being Allowed

[ElectroTheDevolian]

A family member in the household is prone to using a tablet for excessive games and apps to play on, and no one seems to know how parental controls work. Basically it's prone to being slow, drains battery excessively fast, and tends to let a lot of permissions through on a personal account (not mine).

However, what takes the cake is that the sites being allowed can be straight up ridiculous in names. I've seen some in the logs that are literally just letters. No URL, letters. It looks like someone smashed their hands on a keyboard and pressed enter. Obviously there's no way this is normal.

I've used Malwarebytes (Free) for Android and Sophos, but unbelievably only 2 apps showed up. One was a fake app in Malwarebytes (promptly removed), and another was a low-rep app (also promptly removed). What else should I do to clean and possbly disinfect this device?

[mbam_mtbr]

Hi @ElectroTheDevolian,

If you like me to take a deeper look into apps on the device, you can send an Apps Report.

To send an Apps Report with Malwarebytes for Android use the following instructions.

1.Open the Malwarebytes for Android app.

2.Tap the Menu icon.

3. Tap Your apps.

4. Tap three lines icon in upper right corner.

5. Tap Send to support

Choose an email app to send Apps Report.

Your email app will open with the Apps Report included. Send the Apps Report to create a ticket.

PM me the email used and/or the ticket number assigned.

Also, if you are seeing ads it may be caused by browser related ads. This is caused by the way most browsers handle redirections executed by javascript code.  Most browsers don't do a great job of preventing these redirects, which also cause ad pop-ups.  Advertising affiliates are aware of this, and exploit this weakness.  Even if an advertising affiliate is shut down for using this exploit, they just come back with a different affiliate id and are right back at it.

The best way to block these pop-ups are to try a different browsers, disable javascript, install a browser with ad blocking (like Opera), and/or install Ad-block Plus.

If you encounter these pop-ups again, back out of them using Android's back key. Also, clearing your history and cache will help stop the ads from reoccurring.

Thanks for reaching out,
Nathan