Can We Stop The Ads? Taxonomy and Characterization of Smartphone Splash Ads and Existing Countermeasures
Study of 108 ad-defense implementations finds only one tool blocked splash-ad navigation across ten popular apps, and it required Accessibility permission.
The paper taxonomizes smartphone splash ads — full-screen ads at app launch that trick users into trigger mechanisms such as moving the phone — and analyzes 108 documented advertising defenses for deployment barriers. Many defenses require device rooting, jailbreaking, runtime code injection, or application modification; others need extra permissions, rule maintenance, compilation, or payment. In evaluating 13 configurations of 11 tools across 10 popular apps, only one prevented ad-triggered navigation across all ten apps, requiring Accessibility permission and leaving ads visible roughly one second before dismissal. Documented harms include delayed emergency response, driver distraction, and degraded accessibility for vision-impaired users.
- Only one of 13 tested tool configurations blocked navigation across all 10 apps
- Defenses often need rooting, jailbreaking, code injection, or app modification
- Splash ads delay emergency response and harm accessibility
- Authors urge smartphone makers to provide more regulated ad-handling platforms
From the original article
1 min read at arxiv.orgSplash ads are full-screen advertisements that pop up and appear as the first interaction page when users start an app, often tricking users into unknowingly activating certain trigger mechanisms, such as moving the phone to redirect users to other profit-driven third parties.
By Shuhao Zhang · arxiv.org
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